Long wavelength gradient drift instability in Hall plasma devices. II. Applications

Hall plasma devices with electron E × B drift are subject to a class of long wavelength instabilities driven by the electron current, gradients of plasma density, temperature, and magnetic field. In the first companion paper [Frias, Phys. Plasmas 19, 072112 (2012)], the theory of these modes was revisited. In this paper, we apply analytical theory to show that modern Hall thrusters exhibit azimuthal and axial oscillations in the frequency spectrum from tens KHz to few MHz, often observed in experiments. The azimuthal phase velocity of these modes is typically one order of magnitude lower than the E × B drift velocity. The growth rate of these modes scales inversely with the square root of the ion mass, ∼ 1 / m _i. It is shown that several different thruster configurations share the same common feature: the gradient drift instabilities are localized in two separate regions, near the anode and in the plume region, and absent in the acceleration region. Our analytical results show complex interaction of plasma and magnetic field gradients and the E × B drift flow as the sources of the instability. The special role of plasma density gradient is revealed and it is shown that the previous theory is not applicable in the region where the ion flux density is not uniform. This is particularly important for near anode region due to ionization and in the plume region due to diverging ion flux.