Reflection of High Power Pulsed Microwave Incident on a Plasma

Abstract

A high power microwave of 9 GHz with pulse width of 2.9 μsec is incident on a plasma with the electron density of 10¹² cm⁻³ at a pressure of 10⁻⁴ Torr in an Argon gas. For the various powers of the incident microwave, the temporal reflection powers are measured at the electron densities close to the cut-off value of the microwave. The reflection is found first to decrease and increase again with the increased incident power. This is not expected from the linear theory for cold plasmas. These abnormal behaviors can be explained by the existing theories.