Reflectionless passage of an electromagnetic wave through an inhomogeneous plasma layer

Journal Article · Thu Sep 15 04:00:00 EDT 2011 · Plasma Physics Reports

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1134/S1063780X11080022· OSTI ID:22047505

Erokhin, N S; Zakharov, V E ^[1]

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1. Russian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Space Research (Russian Federation)

An exactly solvable model is used as a basis to study the reflectionless passage of a transverse electromagnetic wave through an inhomogeneous plasma containing large-amplitude, small-scale (subwave-length) structures (in particular, opaque regions) that cannot be correctly described by approximate methods. It is shown that, during the reflectionless passage of an electromagnetic wave, strong wave field splashes can occur in certain plasma sublayers. The nonuniform spatial plasma density profile is characterized by a number of free parameters describing the modulation depth of the dielectric function, the characteristic sizes of the structures and their number, the thickness of the inhomogeneous plasma region, and so on. Such plasma density structures are shown to be very diverse when, e.g., a wave that is incident from vacuum propagates without reflection through a plasma layer (wave barrier transillumination). With the cubic nonlinearity taken into account, a one-dimensional problem of the nonlinear transillumination of an inhomogeneous plasma can be solved exactly.

• OSTI ID: 22047505
• Journal Information: Plasma Physics Reports, Journal Name: Plasma Physics Reports Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 37; ISSN PPHREM; ISSN 1063-780X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
APPROXIMATIONS
DEPTH
DIELECTRIC MATERIALS
ELECTROMAGNETIC RADIATION
EXACT SOLUTIONS
INHOMOGENEOUS PLASMA
LAYERS
LENGTH
NONLINEAR PROBLEMS
PLASMA DENSITY
THICKNESS