Air breakdown in the relativistic limit

Summary Form only given, as follows. The relativistic fluid code RELFLAP was developed for the purpose of modeling high-power microwave propagation through the atmosphere. In the relativistic fluid treatment of this problem, the first three moments of the Boltzmann equation are used to obtain fluid equations for electron density, mean momentum, and thermal energy. Particle, momentum, and energy exchange rates for elastic inelastic, and ionizing collisions are included in the calculation. Unlike the nonrelativistic treatment, the effects of electron spatial diffusion and the ponderomotive force are contained in the relativistic form of the Boltzmann equation. For an incident plane parallel microwave pulse, RELFLAP solves the fluid equations and Maxwell´s equations to obtain the temporal behavior of the fields as the microwave propagates through the atmosphere. RELFLAP has been used to model collisionless and collisional cases.<>