Simulation of Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in a Magnetospheric Plasma

The Ring Trap 1 (RT-1) device creates a laboratory magnetosphere, that is motivated by the Jovian magnetosphere, which contains self-organized, high-beta plasmas. In the RT-1 plasmas, the density limit for 8.2 GHz electron cyclotron heating (ECH) occurs at the electron densities 8.0×1017 m−3 and for 2.45 GHz ECH, 1.6×1017 m−3. We have used full-wave simulations to study the propagation and absorption of electromagnetic waves in the RT-1 plasmas in an effort to understand the observed density limits as well as the over-dense state in which the actual density exceeds the cutoff density of the magnetospheric plasma. The simulation results cannot explain the experimentally observed over-dense states and density limits in the view of the power absorption. We discuss possible reasons for the gap between the experiments and the simulation results.