Understanding In-Chamber Plasma Behavior Using a Dimensionally Scaled Gridded Ion Thruster in Three-Dimensional Kinetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations

Gyuha Lim, Deborah Levin

We investigate facility effects on a reduced-scale gridded ion thruster plume using a fully kinetic, three-dimensional Particle-in-Cell/Monte Carlo Collision (PIC-MCC) solver coupl…