Transmission characteristics of electromagnetic waves in a semicircular plasma filament layer generated by a femtosecond laser

Abstract

The transmission characteristics of electromagnetic (EM) waves in a semicircular plasma filament layer generated by a femtosecond laser were studied in a wide frequency band including radar waves. We have focussed on the influence of plasma parameters and filament arrangement based on the diffraction and superposition theory of EM waves on the transmittance. A numerical simulation model using the current density convolution finite‐difference time‐domain method was constructed in a semicircular multilayer filament structure, and the transmission characteristics of spherical EM waves were examined. The simulation results showed that in this semicircular structure, the transmittance was periodically changed at a frequency interval corresponding to the thickness of the filament channel. This phenomenon was more pronounced as the number of the filament layers increased. In the lower band (<30 GHz), there was little change in the transmittance according to layer‐to‐layer distance, but in the higher band (>30 GHz), it changed irregularly. On the contrary, for the electron number density, it changed regularly in the lower frequency and hardly changed in the higher frequency. When the number of layers was 3 or more, the transmittance became 0 at the centre of the channel, and a discontinuous interference pattern appeared more clearly as the frequency increased.