Fields and waves

Overview

Electrical engineering research in fields and waves covers a wide range of funded research and applications in the areas of electromagnetics, plasma physics and computational methods.

Electromagnetics

Research on electromagnetics covers the entire range of the radio spectrum, from DC all the way to optical frequencies. Our research at high frequencies focuses on the modeling of nano-antennas, microwave circuits, electromagnetic scattering, thermo-acoustic imaging, antennas for underground communications and simulation-driven antenna design. In the lower frequency range we work on novel sensors and simulations of complex magnetic materials, compact low frequency antennas, low frequency propagation in the Earth-ionosphere waveguide and near-field through conductor imaging. Our scope is constantly expanding and specific topics can be viewed in published works.

Plasma physics

Within plasma physics we cover a large breadth of sub-disciplines. These include plasma-based particle acceleration, laser-plasma interactions, plasmas for medical sterilization, wave propagation in the Earth’s ionosphere and magnetosphere, wave-particle interactions in the Earth’s radiation belts, plasma instability theory and novel plasma-based antennas.

Computational methods

Our computational work covers several applications and some models include:

• Finite difference time-domain/frequency domain of scattering and propagation.
• Electromagnetic integral equation solvers using high-order method of moments and Nyström methods combined with fast solvers for several applications.
• Quasi-static and magnetostatic simulations for non-linear hysteretic and magnetostrictive magnetic materials using Nyström methods.
• Earth-Ionosphere waveguide propagation model for lightning radiation modeling.
• Ray tracing code in magnetized plasmas.
• Particle-in-cell simulations of laser-plasma and beam-plasma interactions.
• Particle-in-cell simulations of magnetized plasmas in space.
• Hybrid-Vlasov simulations of the Earth’s magnetosphere and radiation belts.
• GPU-based simulations of plasmas.

Projects

Current projects in fields and waves cover the following topics: 

• Measurements and modeling of non-linear hysteretic and magnetostrictive magnetic materials at low frequencies.
• Quasi-static modeling of slowly moving conductors in static magnetic fields.
• Low frequency and through conductor imaging using near-fields.
• Underground communications and autonomous navigation in tunnel and cave environments.
• Modeling of compact plasma-based particle accelerators using laser and beam driven plasmas.
• Plasma instabilities in the near-Earth space environment due to lightning and ground based transmitters.

Associated labs

CU Denver Electromagnetics, Plasmas and Computation Group which includes an RF Laboratory, RF Reverberation Chamber, Magnet Materials Laboratory, VLF Hardware Laboratory.

Associated department

Mechanical engineering