On the Relationship between the Electromagnetic Burst and Inductive Sensor Measurement of a Pulsed Plasma Accelerator

Abstract

A remote and non-invasive diagnostic of the plasma focus using antennas is presented in this work. The main motivation is the application of such diagnostic in a miniaturized plasma accelerator, based on the plasma focus architecture, as a cube satellite thruster. The evaluation of this proposal was carried out measuring a hundred of joules plasma focus operation simultaneously with the inductive measurement and antennas. Three different antennas tuned in the ultra high frequency range were tested: a monopole, Vivaldi and helical. The high frequency transients detected with the antennas were time correlated to the known inductive measurement features. The initial dielectric breakdown and later plasma pinch and subsequent disruption (i.e. the source of the propulsion) were identified to be the principal phenomena to be detected. Signal parameter correlations between the inductive sensor and the antennas showed that the pinch phenomena can be correlated with the antenna signals. Good correlation results were obtained with the monopole antenna when using peak value and signal energy parameter from the antenna transient. An improvement in the correlation results, for the helical and Vivaldi antennas, was obtained when calculating the frequency band energy. In this case, the Vivaldi antenna achieved the best results. The results of the monopole antenna make it an alternative remote sensor for plasma focus, but for the application of a miniaturized plasma focus as pulsed plasma thruster, the Vivaldi antenna is a more feasible design to replace the inductive diagnostic due to its compact design in comparison to the monopole.