X-Wave Propagation Characteristics in a Collisional, Inhomogeneous Plasma Slab

Abstract: Normally incident electromagnetic wave on a collisional, inhomogeneous magnetoplasma slab has been treated as a multilayered system of homogeneous sub-cells within the transfer matrix method. For incident wave frequencies much above the ion cyclotron frequency, the extraordinary elliptically polarized wave mode is relevant for wave propagation normal to a dc-magnetic field. For a sinusoidal plasma density profile, the transmittance, reflectance and absorbance are plotted versus wave frequency normalized to electron cyclotron frequency for different ratios of electron cyclotron to electron plasma frequencies. For fixed and by varying the wave frequency, the curves of the transmittance and reflectance show two pass and two stop bands. When the ratio of cyclotron frequency to plasma frequency is increased, all bands shift to the region of low wave frequency, the pass bands become broader and the stop bands become narrower. The absorbance show three absorption bands; namely, two collisional absorption bands of evanescent waves at the X-wave cut-off frequencies and a resonance absorption band at the upper hybrid frequency. It has also been found that a homogeneous plasma slab overestimates the collisional absorption at cut-offs and has a broader absorption band of the upper hybrid resonance. Keywords: Waves in inhomogeneous magnetoplasma, Upper hybrid resonance, Reflectance, Absorbance, Transmittance.