Reflections on HPE201-2013 High-Power Electromagnetics (HPEM) Course

During the last week in May this year, 35 engineers and physicists gathered at the beautiful Lohas Park in South Korea to attend the latest course on high-power electromagnetics (HPEM). This was the eighth in a series sponsored by the SUMMA Foundation, dating back to the “EMP Interaction and Hardening” course organized by Dr. Carl Baum in 1983 in Socorro, New Mexico. Dr Baum was a leader in the field of high-power electromagnetics, having pioneered much of the technical understanding in what we now refer to as EMP, HPM, and target ID. The themes of this course encompassed “Electromagnetic Environments, Effects and Protection” (EEEP). The course was directed by Dr. Dave Giri, who, according to his own My Journey with Carl memoir [1], was tasked with the responsibility to continue the tradition of offering the HPEM course series. As a broad summary of the course intention, we were referred to the notion of “Source to Target - Target to Source” [2], where one can respectively analyze the signal path leading from a source to a particular port of interest, or synthesize the problem in the reverse direction. In presenting the resources for the subject, we were led through topics of “EM Topology,” “EMP and Lightning,” “External Interaction,” “Apertures and Antennas,” “Coupling,” “HPE Environments,” “Effects,” “Shielding,” “Hardening and Protection,” “HPM Tubes and Sources,” “Pulsed Power,” and “Standards.” Faculty members, all sitting in the front row of Figure 1, shared the lecturing of these topics, which were handled in one-hour sessions.