High-powered electric propulsion thrusters utilizing a magnetized plasma require that plasma exhaust detach from the applied magnetic field in order to produce thrust. This paper presents experimental results demonstrating that a sufficiently energetic and flowing plasma can indeed detach from a magnetic nozzle. Microwave interferometer and probe measurements provide plume density, electron temperature, and ion flux measurements in the nozzle region. Measurements of ion flux show a low-beta plasma plume which follows applied magnetic field lines until the plasma kinetic pressure reaches the magnetic pressure and a high-beta plume expanding ballistically afterward. Several magnetic configurations were tested including a reversed field nozzle configuration. Despite the dramatic change in magnetic field profile, the reversed field configuration yielded little measurable change in plume trajectory, demonstrating the plume is detached. Numerical simulations yield density profiles in agreement with the experimental results.
Two qualitatively different scenarios for the penetration of relativistically intense laser radiation into an overdense plasma, accessible by self-induced transparency, are presented. In the first one, penetration of laser energy occurs by solitonlike structures moving into the plasma. This scenario occurs at plasma densities less than approximately 1.5 times the critical one (depending on ion mass). At higher background densities, laser light penetrates only over a finite length which increases with incident intensity. In this regime the plasma-field structures represent alternating electron (and, on longer time scales, ion) layers separated by about half a wavelength of cavitation with concomitant strong charge separation.
Plasma propulsion concepts that employ a guiding magnetic field raise the question of how the magnetically controlled plasma can detach from the spacecraft. This paper presents a detachment scenario relevant to high-power thrusters in which the plasma can stretch the magnetic field lines to infinity, similar to the solar wind. In previous work, the corresponding ideal magnetohydrodynamics equations have been solved analytically for a plasma flow in a slowly diverging nozzle. That solution indicates that efficient detachment is feasible if the nozzle is sufficiently long. In order to extend the previous model beyond the idealizations of analytical theory, a Lagrangian code is developed in this work to simulate steady-state kinetic plasma flows and to evaluate nozzle efficiency. The code is benchmarked against the analytical results and then used to examine situations that are not analytically tractable, including plasma behavior in the recent Detachment Demonstration Experiment at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
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