A 3-D FDTD scheme for the computation of HPM propagation in atmosphere

Focus on the simulation of the dynamics of high power microwave (HPM) ionization of air at atmosphere, we analyze the physical mechanism in the formation of plasma. The magnetohydrodynamic formulations, formed by Maxwell equations coupled with simple fluid description, are applied to describe the ionization procedure. Then, we present a three dimensional (3-D) finite-difference time domain (FDTD) scheme to deal with such problems, of which the computational procedure is discussed in detail. At last, numerical experiments are provided, and some parameters about plasma are analyzed. The theory also predicts the pulse breakdown threshold accurately.