Publication: Effect of the initial VDFs in magnetic nozzle expansions
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2019-09-15
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This work presents a kinetic study of the plasma response in a fully magnetized plasma expansion. A paraxial, collisionless, steady-state plasma model is used to analyze the effect of expanding in a convergent-divergent nozzle a plasma with different types of VDF at the plasma reservoir. The first part of the paper studies the kinetic features, such as magnetic mirroring and anisotropy for both ions and electrons. The collective effects are analyzed by evaluating the momentum and energy equations based on the kinetic solution. The study of the collisionless heat fluxes allows estimating a simple closure to the fluid equation hierarchy for the electrons. The second part of the paper analyzes the solution with two species of electrons with disparate temperatures at the upstream source. A quasineutral steepened profile is formed, which impacts the plasma properties along the expansion. The collisionless electron cooling, as well as the anisotropy on the divergent side of the nozzle are analyzed by separating the different subpopulations of electrons (free, reflected, or doubly-trapped), of both the thermal and the suprathermal species.
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36th International Electric Propulsion Conference (IEPC), september, 15-20, 2019, Vienna, 14 p.