Kinetic modeling of three-dimensional electrostatic-solitary and surface waves in beam neutralization

TL;DR

This study uses Particle-in-Cell simulations to analyze plasma wave phenomena during ion beam neutralization, revealing the formation of electrostatic solitary waves and surface waves that impact the efficiency of the process.

Contribution

It provides a detailed kinetic model of wave dynamics in beam neutralization, highlighting the role of non-Maxwellian electron distributions and 3D effects.

Findings

Electrostatic solitary waves (ESWs) form and persist, slowing neutralization.

Non-Maxwellian electron distributions lead to large ESWs not predicted by classical theory.

3D effects induce surface waves that influence the neutralization process.

Abstract

This work studies the fundamental plasma processes involved in the neutralization of an ion beam's space-charge by electrons emitted by a filament using Particle-in-Cell simulations. While filament neutralization is economical, previous experiments have shown that a variety of waves become excited in this process that limit the space-charge neutralization. In this work, the formation and movement of electrostatic solitary waves(ESWs), which have low dissipation rates, are characterized for 2D planar and 3D cylindrical beams and are observed to generate waves that survive for a long time and slow the process of beam neutralization. Further, through a 1D Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) analysis, we find that the non-Maxwellian nature of the beam electrons gives rise to large-sized ESWs that are not predicted by theory which assumes that the electrons may be described by a Maxwellian distribution. Our PIC simulations are sufficiently sensitive to be able to resolve important three-dimensional effects in a 3D cylindrical geometry that lead to the excitation of Trivelpiece-Gould surface waves due to high-energy electrons present at the beginning of neutralization.