A Multiple-Scattering Approach to Transient Electromagnetic Interaction with Plasmas

Transient electromagnetic analyses have increased in importance in the past ten years. However, undergraduate electromagnetics teaching generally neglects them in favor of the time-harmonic approach. As a complementary approach we describe a form of transient electromagnetic analysis applicable to cold plasma media which avoids the use of Fourier transforms, and provides significant conceptual and computational advantages. The standard transform inversion technique is contrasted against this method for a simple example.