Supersonic plasma flow near a point charge

E. Gidalevich*, S. Goldsmith, R. L. Boxman

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

A hydrodynamic supersonic plasma jet near a point charge is analysed. The plasma jet is continuous in the field of a negative charge and discontinuous in the field of a positive charge. For a copper plasma with an initial concentration of ni0 = 1020 m-3 and a jet velocity of 1.5 & 104 m s-1, the thickness of the charge separation layer is about 50 D, where D is the Debye length. A shock front forms whose location depends on the point charge eZpc; for Zpc = +5 and +10, the shock is located 0.43 × 10-2 and 0.71 × 10-2 cm, respectively, upstream of the point charge.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)199-204
Number of pages6
JournalJournal of Physics D: Applied Physics
Volume35
Issue number3
DOIs
StatePublished - 7 Feb 2002

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