ABSTRACT
A convergent gas feeding method is proposed to alleviate neutral gas depletion near the central plasma region in typical electrodeless radio-frequency (RF)/helicon plasma thrusters. To achieve further performance improvement, the SuperSonic Gas Puffing (SSGP) system is one of the methods that is expected to overcome the above-mentioned depletion and the density limit. This study discovered that the spatiotemporal profiles of the neutral pressure and the estimated gas diffusion angle vary depending on the SSGP gas feeding condition, i.e., the nozzle size, filling pressure, and the valve opening time. Convergent gas feeding is successfully conducted using the SSGP method in a vacuum. As a preliminary study, high-density plasma is also obtained in the vicinity of the gas injection region using the developed SSGP system. The effects of the gas feeding position and an external divergent magnetic field on the plasma density are investigated. A suitable gas feeding position/region exists for plasma generation using the RF/helicon plasma thruster.
ABSTRACT
A new radially movable multichannel azimuthal probe system has been developed for measuring azimuthal and radial profiles of electrostatic Reynolds stress (RS) per mass density of microscale fluctuations for a cylindrical laboratory plasma. The system is composed of 16 probe units arranged azimuthally. Each probe unit has six electrodes to simultaneously measure azimuthal and radial electric fields for obtaining RS. The advantage of the system is that each probe unit is radially movable to measure azimuthal RS profiles at arbitrary radial locations as well as two-dimensional structures of fluctuations. The first result from temporal observation of fluctuation azimuthal profile presents that a low-frequency fluctuation (1-2 kHz) synchronizes oscillating Reynolds stress. In addition, radial scanning of the probe system simultaneously demonstrates two-dimensional patterns of mode structure and nonlinear forces with frequency f = 1.5 kHz and azimuthal mode number m = 1.
