FDTD simulation of a microwave beam propagating across a plasma with density fluctuations

The video shows the absolute value of the wave electric field of an electromagnetic wave propagating across a plasma with density fluctuations. It has been obtained with full-wave simulations using a cold plasma model (for details about the code, see Ref. [1]).<br><br>The geometry was such that a constant background density is taken with half of the cut-off density of the injected microwave. Onto that homogeneous background, density fluctuations are added which are indicated by the white contour lines in the video where each contour line corresponds to an additional increase of 10 % of the cut-off density. Note that only positive density perturbations (with respect the background density) are shown. The density fluctuations are obtained from a Hasegawa-Wakatani drift-wave turbulence model, see Ref. [2]. <br><br>A constant background magnetic field is used, oriented perpendicular to the simulation domain with a strength corresponding to half of the electron cyclotron resonance frequency. An O-mode is injected with a beam radius of 2 times the vacuum wavelength. The number in the lower left corner indicates the wave oscillation periods.<br><br>A quantitative analysis of the beam scattering can be found in Ref. [3].<br><br>[1]: doi <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0741-3335/50/8/085018">10.1088/0741-3335/50/8/085018</a><br>[2]: doi <a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.47206" target="_blank">10.5281/zenodo.47206</a><br>[3]: <a href="http://arxiv.org/abs/1604.00344">arXiv:1604.00344</a><br><br>