Related papers: 3D PIC Study of Magnetic Field Effects on Hall Thr…
Three-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations are employed to investigate electron transport characteristics in Hall thrusters, with particular focus on how magnetic field configuration affects the electron transport due to electron drift…
Cross-field electron transport in Hall thrusters is widely attributed to high-frequency $E\times B$ instabilities, yet its net spatial pathway remains poorly resolved. Here we perform instability-resolving three-dimensional particle-in-cell…
The advent of high-power Hall thrusters and the increasing interest towards their use as a primary propulsion system for various missions have given a new boost to the efforts aiming at self-consistent predictive modeling of this thruster…
For the SPT-type Hall thrusters, the magnetic structure with magnetic conductive columns leads inherent to azimuthally inhomogeneous magnetic configurations. This azimuthal magnetic inhomogeneity may impact electron azimuthal closed-drift…
Previous experimental studies have found that the neutral gas rotational flow in the opposite direction of electron Hall drift can lead to better experimental results comparing to the same direction. In Hall thrusters, the core factor…
Two counter-propagating cool and equally dense electron beams are modelled with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The electron beam filamentation instability is examined in one spatial dimension, which is an approximation for a…
The topology of the applied magnetic field is an important design aspect of Hall thrusters. For modern Hall thrusters, the field topology most often features curved lines with a concave (negative) curvature upstream of the field peak and a…
A detailed comparison is presented of analytical and particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation investigation of the transverse instability, in two dimensions, of initially one-dimensional electron phase-space hole equilibria. Good quantitative…
We study with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations the stability of fast magnetosonic shocks. They expand across a collisionless plasma and an orthogonal magnetic field that is aligned with one of the directions resolved by the 2D…
One special interest for the industrial development of Hall thruster is characterizing the anomalous cross-field electron transport observed after the channel exit. Since the ionization efficiency is more than 90%, the neutral atom density…
High-power magnetically shielded Hall thrusters have recently emerged to meet the needs of the next-generation space missions. Even though a few such thrusters are currently undergoing their late-stage development campaigns, many unanswered…
An instability driven by the thermal anisotropy of a single electron species is investigated in a 2D particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation. This instability is the one considered by Weibel and it differs from the beam driven filamentation…
The dynamics of the neutral atoms in Hall thrusters affect several plasma processes, from the ionization to the electrons' mobility. In the context of Hall thruster's particle-in-cell (PIC) modeling, the neutrals are often treated…
An axial-azimuthal two-dimensional Hall thruster discharge model was developed for analyzing gradient drift instability (GDI) and cross-field electron transport enhancement induced solely by the GDI. A hybrid particle-fluid model was used…
Magnetic nozzles are a key component of electrodeless plasma thrusters, acting as their main acceleration stage. Non-stationary phenomena common to the entire range of $E \times B$ devices, such as oscillations and instabilities, are likely…
Various systems can be modeled as a point-like explosion of ionized debris into a magnetized, collisionless background plasma -- including astrophysical examples, active experiments in space, and laser-driven laboratory experiments. Debris…
Today, partially magnetized low-temperature plasmas (LTP) in an ExB configuration, where the applied magnetic field is perpendicular to the self-consistent electric field, have important industrial applications. Hall thrusters, a type of…
In this paper, we present three-dimensional (3D) Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations to study the stability of 2D Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) modes in a magnetized plasma with a finite background magnetic field. The simulations were…
We carry out Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations to study the instabilities associated with a 2-D sheared electron flow configuration against a neutralizing background of ions. Both weak and strong relativistic flow velocities are…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of a collisionless, electron-ion plasma with a decreasing background magnetic field, $B$, to study the effect of velocity-space instabilities on the viscous heating and thermal conduction of the…