Effect of Magnetic Field Strength on a Magnetic Thrust Chamber System

To confirm the validity of the modified numerical simulation performing a series of numerical simulations for high-energy laser injection onto a spherical target and the ablation plasma behavior in a magnetic field, the modified numerical simulation is compared with experiments and original numerical simulation. The modified numerical simulation consists of a one-dimensional Lagrangian radiation hydrodynamic code to calculate the creation process of laser-produced plasma and a three-dimensional hybrid particle-in-cell code. The original numerical simulation does not consider the creation process. The measured impulse bit due to the interaction between the diamagnetic current in a laser-produced plasma and the magnetic field generated by neodymium permanent magnets is 2.42±0.23 μN⋅s. The calculated impulse bit in the modified and original numerical simulations is 10.3 and 72.7 μN⋅s, respectively. These results reveal that the modified numerical simulation models closer to the experiment than the original numerical simulation. In addition, to investigate the effect of the magnetic field strength on the plasma behavior in a magnetic thrust chamber system for a laser fusion rocket, the modified numerical simulation is performed. As a result, it is revealed that there is an approximation region of the magnetic field strength for high thrust performance.