Guided electromagnetic waves observed on a conducting ionospheric tether

Insulated Cylindrical Antenna in a Cold Magnetoplasma

“…The propagation constants (axial wavenumbers) of these modes are poles of the integrands in formulas (19) and (20). As mentioned above, these poles are zeros of Λ(p).…”

“…As a result, the integrands remain finite at the points p = ±P b,c . Furthermore, it can be shown that the branch points p = ±ε 1/2 of the functionq(p) are not poles of the integrands in (19) and (20). Recall that a perfectly conducting sheathless cylinder immersed in a resonant magnetoplasma can in general support a single axisymmetric eigenmode if ε > 0 and η < 0 [14,17,19].…”

“…To obtain a representation which exhibits the eigenmode contribution to the total current explicitly, it is necessary to make a suitable deformation of the integration path in the complex p plane in formulas (19) and (20). We will consider this procedure in detail for the frequency range (23).…”

“…We note that waves whose frequencies lie in intervals (23) and (24), in which ε > 0, g < 0, and η < 0, are of great importance for numerous promising applications (see, e.g., [20,22]). As is known, only one characteristic wave of a cold homogeneous magnetoplasma is propagating in the whistler range.…”

“…This interest has in particular been motivated by the results of experiments with a conducting ionospheric tether capable of guiding the current waves [20]. It should be noted that the insulation of the antenna from the surrounding magnetoplasma by a coaxial dielectric sheath can make the antenna characteristics less dependent on the plasma parameters and, hence, more predictable.…”