Frequency up-conversion of microwave pulse in a rapidly growing plasma

Abstract

Two crossed microwave pulses are used to generate plasma in their intersection region inside a chamber. It is shown that the frequency of each output pulse is up-shifted. The percentage of frequency shift is consistent with the theory of Wilks, Dawson, and Mori. Besides frequency shift and some attenuation, the similarity between the spectral distributions of the output and input pulses indicates that there is very little distortion to the pulse shape.