Visualization of Plasma in Hall Thrusters by Particle Simulation

Hall thruster is an electric propulsion device in which high thrust efficiency is achieved in the middle specific impulse. In previous works based on experiments and numerical analyses, the dependency of the 20 kHz-range discharge current oscillation amplitude on anode orifice configuration has been analyzed. Using the results of neutral direct-simulations, the influence of the neutral distribution on the amplitude has been investigated. In the present work, for the purpose of more detail investigation of the influence of the neutral distribution, the ionization and acceleration process in the acceleration channel for various orifice diameters were analyzed using a hybrid-PIC code. The results of visualizations of the ionization rate distribution, which influences the oscillation amplitude, show that the smaller orifice causes the ionization concentration.