Nuclear Explosion generated EMP: Field Calculations. Status report

This report details the status of an implementation for the calculation of EMP, electromagnetic pulse, in a computer program. The EMP following a nuclear explosion in the upper atmosphere is caused by the asymmetry acquired by the primary electrons when they enter the geomagnetic field. The implementation is based on a recent article tying together two approaches. The computer program implementation has been done in FORTRAN using Microsoft's Visual Studio with Intel's Fortran Pro Compiler. The program gives reasonable results although a number of outstanding issues have not been resolved. The main issues to be addressed in future work are: calculation of the self-consistent magnetic field including the geomagnetic field and the magnetic field from the primary electrons, investigation of the various absorption processes for the secondary electrons, conversion of the result to a more convenient coordinate system, removal of numerical instability at large distances of observation and investigation of the influence of different types of weapon.