An investigation of spatial distribution of characteristics of a plasma stream formed by a hall discharge in a channel with metal walls

The effect of the system of delivery of the working medium on the characteristics of a plasma stream in a Hall accelerator with closed azimuthal current is experimentally investigated. The gas delivery system utilizes a porous diaphragm from a carbon–carbon composite material whose pore size is comparable with the Debye radius of the electrons of plasma formed in a discharge channel. The calorimetric method is used to determine the degree of azimuthal and radial nonuniformity of distribution of the energy of plasma stream developed by the accelerator, namely, the distribution of temperature of a titanium target mounted perpendicularly to the incident stream is taken with the aid of an infrared imager. The probe method is used to measure the spatial distribution of temperature and the concentration of charge-exchange plasma at the accelerator channel exit. It is shown that the ratio of the kinetic energy of the flow of heavy particles to the expended electric energy (energy efficiency) exceeds $0.5$.