An E-J Collocated 3-D FDTD Model of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Magnetized Cold Plasma

Abstract—A new three-dimensional finite-difference time-do-main (FDTD) numerical model is proposed herein to simulate electromagnetic wave propagation in an anisotropic magnetized cold plasma medium. Plasma effects contributed by electrons, positive, and negative ions are considered in this model. The current density vectors are collocated at the positions of the elec-tric field vectors, and the complete FDTD algorithm consists of three regular updating equations for the magnetic field intensity components, as well as 12 tightly coupled differential equations for updating the electric field components and current densities. This model has the capability to simulate wave behavior in magnetized cold plasma for an applied magnetic field with arbitrary direction and magnitude. We validate the FDTD algorithm by calculating Faraday rotation of a linearly polarized plane wave. Additional numerical examples of electromagnetic wave propagation in plasma are also provided, all of which demonstrate very good agreement with plasma theory. Index Terms—Earth, electromagnetic wave propagation, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method, ionosphere, magnetized cold plasma. I