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Surface‐Driven Asymmetry and Instability in the Acceleration Region of Hall Thruster
Author(s) -
Taccogna F.,
Longo S.,
Capitelli M.,
Schneider R.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
contributions to plasma physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.531
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1521-3986
pISSN - 0863-1042
DOI - 10.1002/ctpp.200810061
Subject(s) - physics , electron , instability , asymmetry , electric field , secondary emission , kinetic energy , azimuth , particle in cell , acceleration , atomic physics , mechanics , monte carlo method , secondary electrons , computational physics , classical mechanics , optics , nuclear physics , quantum mechanics , statistics , mathematics
It has been shown experimentally that the channel wall material has a substantial effect on the behaviour of Hall discharges. For this reason, the radial profile inside the Hall thruster SPT‐100 is investigated in detail. This is done by a one‐dimensional fully kinetic self‐consistent Particle‐in‐Cell model between the two walls in the acceleration region of the channel. A detailed Monte Carlo probabilistic model for secondary electron emission is implemented as boundary module. Using the local field approximation, two different operative conditions (axial electric field E z =100 V/cm and 300 V/cm) have been simulated. For high discharge voltage case, a strong radial asymmetry and a stream instability propagating all along the radial domain are detected, while in the low voltage case a stable classical situation is recovered. The critical parameters for triggering this unstable regime are the electron azimuthal drift energy and the induced secondary electron emission, while the saturation mechanism is the increasing of the temperature of the initially cold secondary‐electrons. (© 2008 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)