TY - JOUR
T1 - Vector Resolved Energy Fluxes and Collisional Energy Losses in Magnetic Nozzle Radiofrequency Plasma Thrusters
AU - Emoto, Kazuma
AU - Takahashi, Kazunori
AU - Takao, Yoshinori
N1 - Funding Information:
This work was partly supported by the JSPS KAKENHI grant numbers JP21J15345 and JP19H00663. The computer simulation was performed on the A-KDK computer system at the Research Institute for Sustainable Humanosphere, Kyoto University.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2021 Emoto, Takahashi and Takao.
PY - 2021/12/10
Y1 - 2021/12/10
N2 - Energy losses in a magnetic nozzle radiofrequency plasma thruster are investigated to improve the thruster efficiency and are calculated from particle energy losses in fully kinetic simulations. The simulations calculate particle energy fluxes with a vector resolution including the plasma energy lost to the dielectric wall, the plasma beam energy, and the divergent plasma energy in addition to collisional energy losses. As a result, distributions of energy losses in the thruster and the ratios of the energy losses to the input power are obtained. The simulation results show that the plasma energy lost to the dielectric is dramatically suppressed by increasing the magnetic field strength, and the ion beam energy increases instead. In addition, the divergent ion energy and collisional energy losses account for approximately 4%–12% and 30%–40%, respectively, regardless of the magnetic field strength.
AB - Energy losses in a magnetic nozzle radiofrequency plasma thruster are investigated to improve the thruster efficiency and are calculated from particle energy losses in fully kinetic simulations. The simulations calculate particle energy fluxes with a vector resolution including the plasma energy lost to the dielectric wall, the plasma beam energy, and the divergent plasma energy in addition to collisional energy losses. As a result, distributions of energy losses in the thruster and the ratios of the energy losses to the input power are obtained. The simulation results show that the plasma energy lost to the dielectric is dramatically suppressed by increasing the magnetic field strength, and the ion beam energy increases instead. In addition, the divergent ion energy and collisional energy losses account for approximately 4%–12% and 30%–40%, respectively, regardless of the magnetic field strength.
KW - electric propulsion
KW - low-temperature plasma
KW - magnetic nozzle
KW - particle-in-cell (PIC)
KW - plasma expansion
KW - radiofrequency plasma
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U2 - 10.3389/fphy.2021.779204
DO - 10.3389/fphy.2021.779204
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85121754512
SN - 2296-424X
VL - 9
JO - Frontiers in Physics
JF - Frontiers in Physics
M1 - 779204
ER -