Permanent magnet Hall thruster development for future Brazilian space missions

Single electron dynamics in a Hall thruster electromagnetic field profile

“…It is also worth mentioning that this type of configuration is usually referred as cylindrical Hall thruster. 21 In a real device, once the electron Hall current is established, a propellant gas, like argon, 5,6,22 is inserted in the acceleration channel. The electron collisions with the initially neutral propellant gas generate positive ions, which are strongly accelerated by the electric field E 0 to the axial positive direction, generating an impulse in the opposite direction.…”

“…This improvement may have an important impact on the device efficiency. 3,5,9 In order to investigate in more detail the role of chaos and its effect on the ionization, we select from Fig. 3 two sets of parameters that lead to completely distinct results.…”

“…[1][2][3] Among many types of electric propulsion engines, Hall effect thrusters stand out by its current state of the art, being developed and tested for over 50 years. 1,4 Recently, improvements and variations in those devices, like in the magnetic source, [5][6][7][8] in the wall shaping, 2,3 in the propellant gas distribution, 9 and in the number of acceleration channels, 10 have made long space travels using Hall thrusters closer to become a reality.…”

“…Therefore, a key issue in order to increase the thrust power and the overall thruster efficiency is to maximize the gas ionization by the electrons in the acceleration channel. [1][2][3][5][6][7] Most of the basic analyses of particle dynamics on Hall thrusters are based on models that consider a one dimensional electron flow. [14][15][16][17] In such a case, the electron dynamics is integrable, being characterized by the presence of periodic orbits.…”