with one or more parameters impacting the functional performance of the object application_number US 201615186337 A description the basic idea behind our energy deposition approach is that we are able to redistribute sculpt the air 39 s density by quickly u201c impulsively u201d depositing energy into it it is important to note that in order to effectively u201c part u201d the air the energy must be deposited into the air much faster than the gas can expand e g in the form of a short laser or microwave pulse and or an electric discharge among other techniques any heating that allows the gas to propagate away as it is heated even if using very high temperatures will not yield the highly effective results we describe here generally the u201c sudden u201d u201c impulsive u201d heating process will generate a u201c snap u201d or u201c bang u201d to illustrate the following explanation it is best to first look at fig2 and fig3 as examples of the expansion being described once the energy has been u201c effectively instantaneously u201d u201c impulsively u201d deposited in a specific region of the air e g along a line or at a point the surrounding air is driven outward from the heated region by an expanding blast wave until the blast wave resulting from the deposited energy decays slows to sonic speed the surrounding gas is swept outward leaving behind a region of hot pressure equilibrated gas whose density is much less than the original ambient density in some cases less than 15 for example less than 10 8 5 3 2 or less than 1 5 of the ambient density with the other 98 5 having been pushed outward once the expanding shockwave has slowed to sonic speed it continues to expand out.