Plasma sheath: An equivalent nonlinear mirror between electron density and transmitted electromagnetic signal

An experiment on the propagation of electromagnetic (EM) signals in continuous time-varying plasma is designed to establish the nonlinear mirror between electron density and transmission coefficient. The nonlinearity is confirmed from the theoretical and experimental results. The amplitude and phase can be considered nonlinear functions of electron density when the complex interaction between plasma and EM waves is ignored. Results show that amplitude and phase distributions are asymmetrical when electron density follows symmetric distribution. The skewness of amplitude is positive, whereas the skewness of phase is negative. The nonlinear degree is closely related to the ratio of plasma frequency to the incident wave frequency and the range of electron density. The conclusions are crucial to the modeling of plasma sheath channels and understanding the blackout problem.