Predictive Control of Plasma Kinetics: Time-Resolved Measurements of Inert Gas Mixing in a Hollow Cathode Discharge.

摘要

With the continued push for more efficient use of propellant in HETs, better control of the electron energy distribution functions (EEDFs) is needed. This is because, in order to make a plasma thruster more efficient, electrons with energies that contribute to the ionization of neutrals need to be increased, and those that are involved in transient processes, or that do not have enough energy to ionize need to be decreased. However, the ability to predictably control the EEDFs of low temperature plasmas (LTPs) remains a challenging problem in plasma physics due to the complex electromagnetic interactions that take place in the actual system.