Pulse propagation in a magnetoplasma. I. Longitudinal propagation

The propagation of electromagnetic-wave pulses parallel to the static magnetic field in a magnetoplasma with finite collision frequency is treated numerically by means of the fast Fourier transform. This method can be used with almost any dispersion relation; results here are obtained with the Appleton-Hartree dispersion relation. With a rectangular incident pulse envelope, the transmitted pulse shapes for both left and right circularly polarized waves are obtained as functions of ωp/ω, ν/ω, ωb/ω, and the number of vacuum wavelengths in the propagation path. The effect of even small ν/ω markedly differs from the collisionless case.