Thomson-Scattering Diagnostics of Plasmas Produced in a Miniature Microwave Discharge Ion Engine

摘要

The plasma parameters in the miniature microwave discharge ion thruster were successfully measured without perturbation by nonintrusive optical methods of LTS for the first time. At an incident microwave power of 8 W and a krypton mass flow rate of 0.16 mg/s, n_e and T_e were calculated to be (1.1 ±0.2) × 10~(18) m~(-3) and 2.9 ± 0.5 eV, respectively. We confirmed that the measured n_e and T_e were consistent with the high ion current achieved by this thruster.rnThe adoption of these methods could reveal the plasma production-loss mechanism in the microwave discharge ion thruster as well as physical mechanisms inside other electric propulsion devices.