TRANSIENT FIELD BEHAVIOR IN AN ELECTROMAGNETIC PULSE FROM NEUTRAL-BEAM REFLECTION

A neutral beam of electrons and positrons catches up to an electromagnetic pulse moving in a medium with refractive index n. The neutral beam is reflected and deposits some of its energy in a current region in the tail of the pulse. The location, size, and shape of the transient-induced electric fields in the current region are modeled using current densities from uniform averaged fields. The electric field in the current region is predicted to rise linearly with time, with a doubling time determined by the beam parameters and the initial local electromagnetic field. A coordinate frame comoving with the pulse is used to determine the extent of and conditions within the current region. In this comoving frame the Lorentz-transformed electric field is zero, but there is an enhanced Lorentz-transformed magnetic field. The extent of the current region is found from the radius of the semicircular charged-particle orbits in the comoving frame. The neutral beam and electromagnetic pulse are initially moving in the same direction and are both assumed to be one dimensional. The width of the conduction region decreases with time. The electric field at the current region edge rises nearly linearly with time, as long as the neutral beam is being reflected. © 1990 IEEE