New insights into electron transport due to azimuthal drift in a Hall effect thruster

Kentaro Hara (1, 2) , Yusuke Yamashita (3) , Sedina Tsikata (4) , Benjamin Vincent (4) , Stéphane Mazouffre (4) , Shinatora Cho (5)

1 Standford University
2 TAMU - Department of Mathematics [Texas]
3 UTokyo - The University of Tokyo
4 ICARE - Institut de Combustion, Aérothermique, Réactivité et Environnement
5 JAXA - Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency [Tokyo]

Partially magnetized plasmas in the Hall effect thrusters remain poorly understood primarily due to the electron transport in the cross-field direction. It is recently discussed that the drift-diffusion approximation is invalid for the electron dynamics in the presence of a large drift velocity. It is therefore possible that the anomalous electron transport is strongly related with the presence of an azimuthal drift. In this paper, we discuss the importance of the azimuthal drift on cross-field electron transport based on some recent results from a one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation, two-dimensional particle-in-cell simulation, and laser Thomson scattering measurements.

Domaines: Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Kentaro Hara, Yusuke Yamashita, Sedina Tsikata, Benjamin Vincent, Stéphane Mazouffre, et al.. New insights into electron transport due to azimuthal drift in a Hall effect thruster. 36th International Electric Propulsion Conference, Sep 2019, Vienne, Austria. ⟨hal-02346194⟩