Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 March 2009
The problem of electromagnetic radiation from electric and magnetic line sources embedded in a moving bounded magrietoplasma sheath situated over a perfectly conducting plane is studied. The radiation fields due to the line sources consist of both E and H modes, excited simultaneously in the moving sheath. However, when the magnetic field lies parallel to the line source and is oriented normal to the direction of the sheath motion, the modes become decoupled. The far-zone radiation fields for both the electric and the magnetic line sources have been obtained, using the method of saddle-point approximation. The corresponding radiation patterns are also obtained and their variation studied as a function of the magnetic field, the location of the line source, the thickness and the velocity of the moving plasma sheath. It is found that the fields radiated by an electric line source remain unaffected by the presence of an ambient magnetic field and that, in the presence of a sufficiently intense magnetizing field, the magnetic line source over a perfectly conducting plane radiates as though surrounded by vacuum.