Instabilities triggered off by electron collision, plasma density gradient, and magnetic field gradient in Hall thruster
Authors: YANG Sanxiang , ZHAO Yide , DAI Peng , LI Jianpeng , GU Zengjie , MENG Wei , GENG Hai , GUO Ning , JIA Yanhui , YANG Juntai ,   Science and Technology on Vacuum Technology and Physics Laboratory, Lanzhou Institute of Physics, Lanzhou 730000, China
Published: December 2024

The free energy contained in electron drift, electron collision, and plasma density gradient, temperature, magnetic field gradient can trigger off the instabilities with different frequencies and wavelengths in hall thrusters. The instabilities will destroy the stable discharge of plasma, affecting the matching degree between the thruster and the power processing unit, and reducing the performance of the thruster. Based on this, the instabilities triggered off by electron collision, plasma density gradient, and magnetic field gradient in the hall thruster are studied by using dispersion relation derived from the fluid model. The results are shown below. 1) When in the model includes the effects of electron inertia, collision between electrons and neutral atoms, and electron drift, instability can be excited at any axial position from the near anode region to the plume region of the thruster. With the increase of azimuthal wavenumber <inline-formula><tex-math id="M25">\begin{document}${k_y} = 2\pi /\lambda $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, the lower-hybrid mode excited by electron collision transitions into the ion sound mode, where <inline-formula><tex-math id="M26">\begin{document}${k_y} = 2{\text{π }}/\lambda $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, <inline-formula><tex-math id="M27">\begin{document}$\lambda $\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>being the wave length. The real frequency <inline-formula><tex-math id="M28">\begin{document}${\omega _{\text{r}}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> corresponding to the maximum growth rate <inline-formula><tex-math id="M29">\begin{document}${\gamma _{\max }}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> slightly decreases with collision frequency increasing for <inline-formula><tex-math id="M30">\begin{document}${k_y} = 10{\text{ }}{{\text{ m}}^{ - 1}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>. However, the maximum real frequency and real frequency <inline-formula><tex-math id="M31">\begin{document}${\omega _{\text{r}}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> corresponding to the maximum growth rate <inline-formula><tex-math id="M32">\begin{document}${k_y} = 300{{\text{ m}}^{ - 1}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> will not change with collision frequency for <inline-formula><tex-math id="M33">\begin{document}${k_y} = 300{\text{ }}{{\text{ m}}^{ - 1}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>. Independent of the value of <inline-formula><tex-math id="M34">\begin{document}${k_y}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, the growth rate of mode triggered off by electron collision increases with collision frequency increasing. 2) The plasma density gradient effect plays a dominant role in triggering off instabilities when the electron inertia, electron-neutral collisions and plasma density gradient are simultaneously included in the model. The dynamic behavior of the model does not change with the increase of <inline-formula><tex-math id="M35">\begin{document}${k_y}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>, but the eigenvalue of the model increases with the <inline-formula><tex-math id="M36">\begin{document}${k_y}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> increasing. Since the sign of anti-drift frequency induced by the plasma density gradient is changed, the mode eigenvalues have the opposite change trend on both sides of point <inline-formula><tex-math id="M37">\begin{document}${\kappa _{\text{N}}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>. When the sign of <inline-formula><tex-math id="M38">\begin{document}${\omega _r}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M39">\begin{document}${\omega _r}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> are opposite, the density gradient effect has a stabilization effect on instability excitation (<inline-formula><tex-math id="M40">\begin{document}${\kappa _{\text{N}}} > 0$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>). When the sign of <inline-formula><tex-math id="M41">\begin{document}${\omega _{\text{s}}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> and <inline-formula><tex-math id="M42">\begin{document}${\omega _{\text{r}}}$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula> are the same, the density gradient effect enhances the excitation of instability (<inline-formula><tex-math id="M43">\begin{document}${\kappa _{\text{N}}} < 0$\end{document}</tex-math></inline-formula>). 3) If the plasma density gradient, magnetic field gradient, electron inertia and electron-neutral collisions are included in the dispersion, the mode eigenvalue relies on the electron drift frequency, and the diamagnetic drift frequency induced by the density gradient and magnetic field gradient. When the density gradient effect and the magnetic field gradient effect are considered, there is a stable window in the discharge channel. However, if the electron inertia and electron-neutral collisions are also included, the stable window will disappear.