Computational Studies of Filamentary Pattern Formation in a High Power Microwave Breakdown Generated Air Plasma

Simulations of the dynamics of high power microwave breakdown of air at atmospheric pressure and 110 GHz are presented. The model reproduces well the formation and motion of filamentary plasma arrays observed experimentally with fast camera imaging. The numerical model is based on finite-difference time domain solutions of Maxwell equations coupled with a simple fluid description of the plasma growth and diffusion. The computational procedure is discussed in details along with numerical experiments, to show the sensitivity of the results to different numerical parameters.