Abstract
Information on the ionization of propellant gases is invaluable for Hall thruster plasma studies because the ion beam is the source of thrust generation. This study proposes a new method that identifies the ionization location of Xe+ ions in Hall thruster plasmas by combining the laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy and floating emissive probe measurements in annular and cylindrical Hall thrusters. In an annular Hall thruster, this method indicated that ionization became the largest at a few millimeters upstream of the maximum radial magnetic field, whose result agreed with a one-dimensional hybrid fluid/particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation result. On the other hand, the ionization region in a cylindrical Hall thruster was located deeper inside the discharge cavity than that of the annular thruster. In addition, a large upstream shift of the ionization region was observed with the decreasing fraction of the radial magnetic field in the cylindrical Hall thruster.
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