Determination of the ionization and acceleration zones in a stationary plasma thruster by optical spectroscopy study: Experiments and model

A stationary plasma thruster is experimentally studied using different optical spectroscopies of xenon ions. Doppler shift in laser induced fluorescence is used for velocity determination while the ion density is determined by emission spectroscopy. These experiments show unambiguously that the ionization and the acceleration zones are spatially distinct inside the thruster channel. Moreover, it is shown that these results can be easily taken into account with a very simple quasineutral stationary one-dimensional model. (C) 2002 American Institute of Physics.