An analysis is made of the phenomenon of self-induced erosion and
spectral breaking of ionizing high-power microwave pulses propagating in a gas.
The analysis describes in an analytically explicit and physically clear way the
consistent interaction between the microwave pulse and the self-induced
breakdown plasma. In particular, it clarifies, both qualitatively and quantitatively,
the mechanisms behind the pulse erosion and the spectral breaking
phenomenon, i.e. the splitting of the pulse spectrum into a redshifted and a
blueshifted peak as observed in numerical simulation results as well as in
experiments.
Time-dependent numerical simulation of diffraction and absorption effects in diagnostics of short high-power microwave pulses using wide-aperture liquid calorimeters
