Cavity resonators containing anisotropic media

Summary A general procedure for determining the resonant frequencies and mode vectors of cavity resonators of arbitrary shape and containing media characterized by arbitrary tensor permeabilities and permittivities is given. The method is basically that of Galerkin applied to an operator formulation of the problem. The solution is in the form of a matrix eigenvalue equation, which can be solved by conventional computational techniques. The general formulas are specialized to the case of a rectangular cavity containing gyrotropic plasma, and representative numerical calculations are given. The solution is compared to a first-order perturbation solution to illustrate to what extent the latter can be used as an approximation.