Plasma antenna with frequency adjustment

A discharge of limited length (“plasma column”) in a gas-discharge tube filled with a rarefied gas was studied. The discharge is created due to the one-sided excitation of an extended high-frequency discharge supported by a propagating azimuthally symmetric mode of the surface wave. It is shown that a “plasma column” can be an effective plasma antenna at operating frequencies below the plasma frequency (ωp), with frequency tuning due to changes in the length of the “plasma column”.