Abstract
The expansion of a mesothermal, plasma plume into vacuum is a classical topic in plasma dynamics. (Mesothermal plasma is defined as having a flow characteristics of vte >> vbeam >> vti, where vte, vbeam and vti are the electron thermal velocity, beam drifting velocity and ion thermal velocity, respectively.) It is also relevant to many application problems in spacecraft-plasma interactions and electric propulsion. Studies of mesothermal plasma expansion have mostly focused on the ion plasma time scale. Thus, a common approach used in almost all previous studies is to assume that the electrons may be modeled as an equilibrium, massless fluid so to simplify the treatment of electron dynamics. This approach, combined with a further assumption that the electrons are isothermal, leads to the commonly used Boltzmann relationship between the electron density ne and the potential Φ:
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