Operation and Qualification of Coaxial Plasma Gun Modes With a Gas Puff Inlet

Abstract

We describe the design, operation, and qualification of a coaxial plasma gun (CPG) in a low-pressure environment with a gas puff inlet. This infrastructure enables a CPG to operate in the deflagration mode followed by snowplow plasma sheath formation. These modes inject radially expanding and axially propagating plasma sheaths into a low-pressure residual background. This manuscript details the pulse power delivery circuit, including automatic logic control of subcircuits. High-speed camera images (12800 frames/s) of the formed plasma elucidate the ionization of an axially propagating plasma. Long-exposure images (1.3 s) capture the full propagation distance of the plasmoid. Rogowski coil current diagnostics elucidate the timing of a self-crowbar discharge that delineates between deflagration and snowplow modes. An empirically determined 50-ms gas puff duration resulted in a maximum plasma propagation distance of <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\approx 23$ </tex-math></inline-formula> cm. Shorter durations did not ionize a sufficient amount of gas for elongated axial propagation, whereas longer durations suppressed axial plasma sheath expansion. This type of gas injection CPG device is now qualified for use in CPG experiments that require the snowplow mode and maximum mean free path of fast ions resulting from various plasma heating mechanisms. These include CPG operation within external magnetic fields in which significant plasma propagation distance is required, including solar physics experiments and space propulsion development.