Abstract
Two‐dimensional numerical simulations have been carried out in order to study the injection and propagation of a nonrelativistic electron beam from a spacecraft into a fully ionized plasma in a magnetic field. Contrary to the earlier results in one dimension, a high‐density electron beam whose density is comparable to the ambient density can propagate into a plasma. A strong radial electric field resulting from the net charges in the beam causes the beam electrons to spread radially, reducing the beam density. When the injection current exceeds the return current, significant charging of the spacecraft is observed along with the acceleration of the ambient electrons back to the spacecraft. As a result, a beam current much larger than the thermal return current can be injected into space. Recent data on the electron beam injection from the Spacelab 1 (SEPAC) are discussed.
Highlights
A number of artificial particle beam experiments have been carried out in the last decade using sounding rockets and artificial satellites (Grandal, 1982)
When the beam density becomes comparable to the ambient density, beam propagation is prohibited due to the reflection of the injected beam electrons, causing a charging of a spacecraft. These results found in one-dimensional simulation remain valid only in the presence of a strong axial magnetic field preventing the beam electrons from spreading radially
(A) Increasing the beam der.sity (Case 2) When the beam density ic increased to n^/r\Q = 2 while keeping all the other paramaters the same (Case 2 ), we found that a significant fraction of beam electrons is reflected back to the spacecraft
Summary
A number of artificial particle beam experiments have been carried out in the last decade using sounding rockets and artificial satellites (Grandal, 1982). Beam phase-space, y-v ,, shown in Fig. 4(b) indicates the persistence of the beam-plasma instability as in the case of one-dimensional results.
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