Transient response of a circular cylinder to an electromagnetic pulse

The transient response of a perfectly conducting circular cylinder to an electromagnetic pulse of a double exponential type has been investigated, and a new analytical expression has been derived for the induced current density on the cylinder surface. The analysis performed in this paper is based on the frequency domain eigenfunction solution of the surface current density and yields an analytical expression which is theoretically valid for both the shadow and illuminated regions and for all the time ranges. Numerical calculations show that results for the entire time range after the instant the initial incident wave front has passed the cylinder axis can easily be obtained from this single analytical expression. For very large time values, only the first few terms in the expression are needed to give a satisfactory accuracy.