Nonlinear Hydrodynamic Effects in Dense Microplasmas

Nonlinear behavior in plasma interactions with GHz electromagnetic waves arises from nonlinearities in the electron momentum equation, among other sources. In systems where there may be a high local electric field amplification (resonators), dense microplasmas of size much smaller than the wavelength are formed near regions of high fields. In a typical Finite-Difference Time-Domain simulation, a plasma is modeled as a (linear) Drude material, which does not capture the nonlinear polarization terms of a plasma. In this work we couple the nonlinear electron momentum equation to electromagnetic simulation in order to explore nonlinear behavior.