Anomalous conductivity in Hall thrusters: Effects of the non-linear coupling of the electron-cyclotron drift instability with secondary electron emission of the walls

With the help of an implicit particle-in-cell code, we have shown in a previous paper that the electron-cyclotron drift instability was able to induce anomalous conductivity as well as anomalous heating. As such it can be a major actor among the mechanisms involved in the operation of Hall thrusters. However, experimental results show that the nature of wall material has a significant effect on the behavior of the thruster. The purpose of this paper is to study the plasma-wall interaction in the case where the plasma is heated self-consistently by electrostatic fluctuations induced by the electron-cyclotron drift instability. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.