Slowly spreading propagation characteristics of flying electromagnetic toroid

Abstract

As a new kind of electromagnetic pulses with finite energy, the flying electromagnetic toroid (FET), also called as the flying electromagnetic doughnut, has significant potential applications, such as the excitation of anapole non-radiation mode and the acceleration of charged particles. To show the propagation characteristic of FET, the spatial distribution and spectrum characteristic of the transverse and longitudinal components of FET and its topology evolution in the propagation process are discussed in this paper. Without loss of generality, we theoretically research the longitudinal field and transverse field of the transverse magnetic (TM) FET based on the real part of FET’s propagation equations. The field distribution, topology, and spectrum when the FET propagates to different positions can be calculated by assigning corresponding values to the time variable in FET’s propagation equations, therefore, the propagation characteristics of FET can be studied accurately in theory. The magnetic field of TM FET is distributed into rings in the plane vertical to the propagation direction and the electric field of TM FET is rotated around the magnetic field, which means the FET has a hypertorus topology. All the field components of FET are rotationally symmetric in the plane vertical to the propagation direction. The FET’s center is the maximum position of the longitudinal electric field component and the null position of the transverse electric and magnetic field components. Maximum values of FET’s longitudinal field are always located on the central line of FET’s propagation path and decrease gradually in the propagation process. Different from the longitudinal field, the maximum value of FET’s transverse field gradually moves away from FET’s center. The theoretical research indicates that the FET spreads quite slowly in its early propagation state and spreads linearly after propagating a long distance, which has the slowly spreading propagation characteristic even in the so-called focused range with stable toroidal topological structure. The further spectrum analysis shows that the high-frequency components spread less than the low-frequency components and the high-frequency components play a vital role in the topology retention of FET in the focused range, which may provide a basis for the generation and application of FET. At present, the theoretical research on FET’s characteristics is increasingly improved. To apply the attractive characteristics of FET in actual systems, it is necessary to actually generate FET. Therefore, the generation method of FET should become the next research emphasis.