Experimental investigation of drift instabilities in ExB discharges
POSTER
Abstract
Drift plasma instabilities are characterized in three ExB discharges operating on noble gases: two Hall-type plasma thrusters with insulating channel walls (70mm outer diameter, 20 mm long, and 90mm outer diameter, 80mm long), and a small magnetron discharge (5mm diameter). Plasma instabilities in the ExB discharges are investigated using arrays of electrostatic probes. The signals from the probes arrays are processed with wavelet filtering, and frequency-wavelength dispersion analysis tools. Results are compared to hybrid PIC-fluid axial azimuthal simulations and analyzed in light of recent theories of gradient-driven drift instabilities, in an effort to better understand the relation between drift instabilities and anomalous electron transport in these discharges.
*This work is sponsored by the U.S. Air Force Office of Scientific Research with Dr. Mitat Birkan as program manager. CVY acknowledges support from the DOE NNSA Stewardship Science Graduate Fellowship under Contract DE-FC52-08NA28752.