Microwave Propagation in Warm, Collisional Magnetoionic Media

Abstract

In this paper, we present the derivation of the magnetoionic dispersion equation and the corresponding index of refraction and propagation constant for characterizing wave propagation in warm plasma immersed in a uniform magnetic field. To demonstrate the effects of plasma temperature on wave propagation and attenuation, a numerical example of the developed theory has been given. It is well known that there are two forward propagating modes of cold plasma: one is weakly attenuated and the other is weakly amplified. By comparing the cold plasma complex propagation constant of the classical Appleton-Hartree theory with the propagation constant obtained for the warm plasma case, we observed that the attenuated mode is thermally enhanced while the amplification of the other mode decreases by increasing the temperature where it becomes damped beyond a certain electron thermal speed.