Elucidation of Internal Phenomena in Microwave Ion Thruster μ10 Utilizing Electro-Optic Fiber Probe

The microwave ion thruster μ10's ion beam current saturated at a large mass flow rate when propellant gas was injected from a waveguide inlet and it was improved by additional propellant inlets to a discharge chamber. In order to understand the mechanism of these phenomena, it is important to measure distributions of the microwave electric field inside the discharge chamber, which is directly related to plasma production. In this study, we applied an electro-optic (EO) probe to measuring the microwave electric field. The probe contains no metal and can be accessed in the discharge chamber with less disruption to the microwave distribution. We measured electric-field profiles along the centerline and in the ECR area of μ10 with the EO probe. Consequently, this paper revealed that when the propellant was injected from the waveguide inlet, microwave was reflected in the waveguide at large mass flow rate, which disturbed a propagation of microwave to the ECR area. It also revealed that when the propellant was injected from the discharge chamber inlet, the mass flow rate where the microwave reflection occurred shifted to larger rate, which resulted in the increase of the beam current．