Influence of the magnetic field curvature on the radial–azimuthal dynamics of a Hall thruster plasma discharge with different propellants

Abstract

The topology of the applied magnetic field is an important design aspect of Hall thrusters. For modern Hall thrusters, the magnetic field topology most often features curved lines with a concave (negative) curvature upstream of the field's peak and a convex (positive) curvature downstream. Additionally, the advent of the magnetic shielding technique has resulted in Hall thruster designs with non-conventional field topologies that exhibit high degrees of concavity upstream of the field's peak. In this article, a detailed study is carried out on the effects that the magnetic field curvature has on the plasma discharge in a 2D configuration representative of a Hall thruster's radial–azimuthal cross section. The analyses are performed for discharges of three propellants of high applied interest: xenon, krypton, and argon. For each propellant, high-fidelity electrostatic reduced-order particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are performed with various degrees of positive and negative curvatures of the magnetic field. Corresponding 1D radial PIC simulations are also performed for xenon to compare the observations against the 2D results. Most notably, it is observed that the instability spectra in the positive-curvature cases are mostly dominated by electron cyclotron drift instability, whereas the modified two stream instability is dominant in the negative-curvature cases. The distributions of electron and ion temperatures, in particular, as well as the contribution of various mechanisms to electrons’ cross-field transport show notable variations between the positive and negative curvature values. Finally, the field curvature is observed to majorly influence the ion beam divergence along the radial and azimuthal coordinates.