Improved electron emitter

Emitter applies to devices in which a plasma is generated by electron bombardment. Device is conventional hollow cathode modified by addition of integral keeper cap containing small aperture which encloses outlet of the cathode and is held in position by ceramic tube

Parallel plate radiofrequency ion thruster

An 8-cm-diam. argon ion thruster is described. It is operated by applying 100 to 160 Mhz rf power across a thin plasma volume in a strongly divergent static magnetic field. No cathode or electron emitter is required to sustain a continuous wave plasma discharge over a broad range of propellant gas flow. Preliminary results indicate that a large fraction of the incident power is being reflected by impedance mismatching in the coupling structure. Resonance effects due to plasma thickness, magnetic field strength, and distribution are presented. Typical discharge losses obtained to date are 500 to 600 W per beam ampere at extracted beam currents up to 60 mA

A 15,000-hour cyclic endurance test of an 8-centimeter-diameter electron bombardment mercury ion thruster

A laboratory model 8 cm thruster with improvements to minimize ion chamber erosion and peeling of sputtered metal was subjected to a cyclic endurance test for 15,040 hours and 460 restarts. A charted history of several thruster operating variables and off-normal events are shown in 600-hour segments at three points in the test. The transient behavior of these variables during a typical start-stop cycle is presented. Finding of the post-test inspection confirmed most of the expected results. Charge exchange ions caused normal accelerator grid erosion. The workability of the various design features was substantiated, and attainable improvements in propellant utilization efficiency should significantly reduce accelerator erosion

Experimental investigation of a high-voltage isolation device for ion-thrustor propellant feed

Operating range extension of high voltage isolation device for propellant feed system of ion thrusto

Experimental performance of a 1-kilowatt arcjet thruster

A formerly unused cathode and anode/nozzle assembly from a flight model arcjet was tested with nitrogen, hydrogen, and nitrogen-hydrogen mixture simulating ammonia decomposition products at arc power levels from about 300 to 950 W. Two different power sources and two nozzle configurations were tested at low back-ground pressures to exclude facility effects. Increased nozzle expansion ratio improved cold flow nozzle efficiency from 0.8 to 0.9. Hydrogen thrust efficiency of 0.26 at 872 sec specific impulse matched some 1964 performance on a similar device. Simulated ammonia thrust efficiency was 0.31 at 422 sec. Spontaneously occurring voltage mode changes at constant arc current could be partially stabilized with appropriate power source characteristics. In the higher voltage mode specific impulse was higher, but thrust efficiency changed only slightly from that of the lower voltage mode. Sustained tests of up to 2 hr duration exhibited no apparent performance degradation with time

Single grid accelerator for an ion thrustor

A single grid accelerator system for an ion thrustor is discussed. A layer of dielectric material is interposed between this metal grid and the chamber containing an ionized propellant for protecting the grid against sputtering erosion

Localization phase diagram of two-dimensional quantum percolation

We examine quantum percolation on a square lattice with random dilution up to $q=38$ and energy $0.001 \le E \le 1.6$ (measured in units of the hopping matrix element), using numerical calculations of the transmission coefficient at a much larger scale than previously. Our results confirm the previous finding that the two dimensional quantum percolation model exhibits localization-delocalization transitions, where the localized region splits into an exponentially localized region and a power-law localization region. We determine a fuller phase diagram confirming all three regions for energies as low as $E=0.1$, and the delocalized and exponentially localized regions for energies down to $E=0.001$. We also examine the scaling behavior of the residual transmission coefficient in the delocalized region, the power law exponent in the power-law localized region, and the localization length in the exponentially localized region. Our results suggest that the residual transmission at the delocalized to power-law localized phase boundary may be discontinuous, and that the localization length is likely not to diverge with a power-law at the exponentially localized to power-law localized phase boundary. However, further work is needed to definitively assess the characters of the two phase transitions as well as the nature of the intermediate power-law regime

Plasma device feed system Patent

Nonconductive tube as feed system for plasma thrusto

Hyperbolic covering knots

Given any knot k, there exists a hyperbolic knot tilde k with arbitrarily large volume such that the knot group pi k is a quotient of pi tilde k by a map that sends meridian to meridian and longitude to longitude. The knot tilde k can be chosen to be ribbon concordant to k and also to have the same Alexander invariant as k.Comment: Published by Algebraic and Geometric Topology at http://www.maths.warwick.ac.uk/agt/AGTVol5/agt-5-57.abs.htm

Boundary Dynamics of Sweeping Interface

A new type of boundary dynamics is proposed to describe the interface that sweeps space to collect distributed material. Based upon geometrical consideration on a simple physical process representing a certain experiment, the dynamics is formulated as the small diffusion limit of Mullins-Sekerka problem of crystal growth. It is demonstrated that a steadily extending finger solution exists for a finite range of propagation speed, but numerical simulations suggest they are unstable and the interface shows a complex time development.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure