Simulation of high frequency plasma oscillations within Hall thrusters.

摘要

The purpose of this project is to study high frequency plasma oscillations that occur within Hall thrusters. This is approached in two ways: through a numerical simulation, and experimental research conducted on a laboratory Hall thruster. This study seeks to address an inherent problem with existing Hall thruster simulations related to the electron transport process. The goal of the current project is to determine how significant high frequency plasma oscillations are to the electron transport.; Experimental research on high frequency plasma oscillations was carried out at the Stanford University Plasma Dynamics Lab. The experimental data gathered at Stanford forms a basis from which to compare the simulation results. In general, the trends of the simulation parameters agree with experiment. However, there were notable discrepancies in terms of the ion velocity and electron density. Despite this shortcoming, the simulation was successful at capturing the effects of high frequency plasma density oscillations.