Numerical study of the propagation of high power microwave pulse in air breakdown environment

Summary form only given. A theoretical model is developed to describe the propagation of an intense microwave pulse in an air breakdown environment including Poynting´s equation for the continuity of the power flux of the pulse and the rate equation of the electron density. A transformation to the frame of local time of the pulse is introduced to separate the spatial and temporal derivatives in the two modal equations. Thus, the required computation time can be reduced considerably and the ODE subroutine for numerical analysis is well established. A comprehensive numerical analysis of the propagation of the intense microwave pulse through the atmosphere has been performed. It is shown that the pulse energy can be severely attenuated by the self-generated plasma. The case of achieving a maximum ionization at specified region in the upper atmosphere has been considered as an application of the model.