The spatial damping of electrostatic wave in Hall thruster beam plasma

The magnetohydrodynamics model is used to investigate the spatial damping in a Hall thruster beam plasma under the effect of thermal motion and electron beam density. Plasma dispersion equation is derived analytically using the normal mode analysis of the small oscillations. The dispersion equation is solved numerically to find out the damping modes in a Hall thrusters plasma. The damping length shows dependence on the radial magnetic field, beam density, ion density, electron drift velocity, collision frequency, electron and ion temperature. We investigated that the damping length increases with ion density and electron-ion temperature, whereas it decreases with the radial magnetic field, beam density, electron drift velocity and collision frequency.

Keywords:

Hall thruster , Magnetic field , electron drift velocity , damping length