Fully kinetic simulations of collisionless, mesothermal plasma emission: Macroscopic plume structure and microscopic electron characteristics

• DOI: 10.1063/1.4978484
• Publication Date: 2017-03-28T00:31:11Z
• Authors: Yuan Hu; Joseph Wang
• Keywords: 0103 physical sciences; 01 natural sciences

This paper presents a fully kinetic particle particle-in-cell simulation study on the emission of collisionless plasma plume consisting cold beam ions and thermal electrons. Results are presented for both two-dimensional macroscopic structure microscopic electron characteristics. We find that exhibits several distinctive regions, including an undisturbed core region, cooling expansion isothermal region. The properties each region determined by division between approximately matches Mach line generated at edge surface, potential well established in beam. interactions electrons lead to new, near-equilibrium state different from initial distribution characteristics also very anisotropic. As process is mostly non-equilibrium anisotropic, commonly used assumption collisionless, mesothermal may be treated as single equilibrium fluid general not valid.