Confinement characteristic of primary electrons with the variation of channel width in the discharge chamber of annular ion thruster

In this paper, the confinement characteristic of primary electrons in the non-axisymmetric discharge chamber of annular ion thruster is investigated by a three-dimensional (3D) non-self-consistent particle tracking model with Monte Carlo Collision (MCC) method. The results show that: The density of primary electrons upstream of ion optics on cathode axis is about 5–50 times higher than that of the other side, which means that the density of primary electrons is obviously non-axisymmetric. The channel width has a significant effect on the average density and uniformity of primary electrons. The average density can be increased by nearly 1.5 times under the appropriate channel width, meanwhile, the variance of density distribution can be reduced by more than 2 times. This is because that increasing the channel width can improve the average confinement length of primary electrons greatly. Furthermore, there is an infection point in the increase of primary electron average confinement length with the channel width, which caused by the significant change of magnetic field structure. Under the case after the inflection point, primary electron mainly (more than 50%) moves to the channel center, which makes the average confinement length of primary electrons and their number in the discharge chamber increase largely.