A Higher Order FDTD Method for EM Wave Propagation in Collision Plasmas

摘要

A fourth-order in time and space, finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) algorithm is applied to study the electromagnetic propagation in homogeneous, collision and warm plasma. The approach can significantly minimize the dispersion errors while still maintaining minimal memory requirement. For the problem of three-dimensional propagation, the scheme requires only three additional memory cells per Yee cell over and above that of the generic FDTD scheme. To investigate the validation of the fourth-order FDTD algorithm, the reflection coefficient of a slab of non-magnetized collision plasma is calculated. Comparisons between the accurate data and the results of second-order or fourth-order FDTD methods are discussed.