Diallo A, Keller S, Shi Y, Raitses Y, Mazouffre S
Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08540, USA.
CNRS, ICARE, Orléans, France.
Rev Sci Instrum. 2015 Mar;86(3):033506. doi: 10.1063/1.4914829.
Time-resolved variations of the ion velocity distribution function (IVDF) are measured in the cylindrical Hall thruster using a novel heterodyne method based on the laser-induced fluorescence technique. This method consists in inducing modulations of the discharge plasma at frequencies that enable the coupling to the breathing mode. Using a harmonic decomposition of the IVDF, one can extract each harmonic component of the IVDF from which the time-resolved IVDF is reconstructed. In addition, simulations have been performed assuming a sloshing of the IVDF during the modulation that show agreement between the simulated and measured first order perturbation of the IVDF.
