Analysis of propagation and polarization characteristics of electromagnetic waves through non uniform magnetized plasma slab using propagator matrix method

Abstract

An analytical technique referred to as the propagator matrix method (PMM) is presented to study the problem of electromagnetic (EM) waves interacting with the non uniform magnetized plasma. In this method, the state vector is proposed to describe the characteristics of eaten waves in anisotropic medium, and state vectors at two different locations are related with each other by the propagator matrix. This method can be used to deal with the phenomenon of the trans-formation of EM wave polarization induced by anisotropic magnetized plasma, besides the conventional propagation characteristics through plasma slab, which overcomes the drawback of other analytical methods introduced in former studies. The EM problem model considered in this work is a steady-state, two-dimensional, non uniform magnetized plasma slab with arbitrary magnetic declination angle, which is composed of a number of sub slabs. Each sub slab has a fixed electron density, and the overall density profile across the whole slab follows any practical distribution function. Based on PMM, a significant feature of strong transformation of EM wave polarization is addressed when an incident wave normally projects on the slab, which leads to the reflected or transmitted waves containing two kinds of waves, i.e., the co-polarized wave and the cross-polarized wave. The effects of varying the plasma parameters on the reflected and transmitted powers of co-polarization and cross-polarization, as well as the absorptive power for the typical bi-exponential density profile are investigated in detail, which provides a certain reference to various plasma technologies such as plasma stealth and communications through re-entry plasma sheath.