|-
| style="width:30px;" | [[File:hertz_src_icon.png]]
| [[Glossary of EM.Cube's Excitation Materials, Sources, Devices & Other Physical Object Types#Hertzian Short Dipole Source |Hertzian Short Dipole Source]]
| style="width:300px;" | Almost omni-directional physical radiator
| style="width:300px;" | None, stand-alone source
|-
| style="width:30px;" | [[File:plane_wave_icon.png]]
| [[Glossary of EM.Cube's Excitation Materials, Sources, Devices & Other Physical Object Types#Plane Wave |Plane Wave Source]]
| style="width:300px;" | Used for modeling scattering
| style="width:300px;" | None, stand-alone source
|-
| style="width:30px;" | [[File:huyg_src_icon.png]]
| [[Glossary of EM.Cube's Excitation Materials, Sources, Devices & Other Physical Object Types#Huygens Source |Huygens Source]]
| style="width:300px;" | Used for modeling equivalent sourced imported from other [[EM.Cube]] modules
| style="width:300px;" | Imported from a Huygens surface data file
|}
Click on each category to learn more details about it in the [[Glossary of EM.Cube's Excitation Materials, Sources, Devices & Other Physical Object Types]].
A short Hertzian dipole is the simplest way of exciting a structure in [[EM.Illumina]]. A short dipole source acts like an infinitesimally small ideal current source. The total radiated power by your dipole source is calculated and displayed in Watts in its property dialog. Your physical structure in [[EM.Illumina]] can also be excited by an incident plane wave. In particular, you need a plane wave source to compute the radar cross section of a target. The direction of incidence is defined by the θ and φ angles of the unit propagation vector in the spherical coordinate system. The default values of the incidence angles are θ = 180° and φ = 0° corresponding to a normally incident plane wave propagating along the -Z direction with a +X-polarized E-vector. Huygens sources are virtual equivalent sources that capture the radiated electric and magnetic fields from another structure that was previously analyzed in another [[EM.Cube]] computational module.