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Article
Photoelectron Sheath and Plasma Charging on the Lunar Surface: Semianalytic Solutions and Fully-Kinetic Particle-In-Cell Simulations
IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science
  • Jianxun Zhao
  • Xinpeng Wei
  • Xiaoping Du
  • Xiaoming He, Missouri University of Science and Technology
  • Daoru Frank Han, Missouri University of Science and Technology
Abstract

This article presents the derivation of semianalytic solutions to a new 1-D photoelectron sheath model near the lunar surface. The plasma species include the cold solar wind protons, drifting Maxwellian solar wind electrons, and Maxwellian photoelectrons emitted from the surface. The semianalytic model is then numerically solved to obtain profiles of quantities of interest as functions of the vertical distance from the surface. A fully-kinetic 3-D finite-difference (FD) particle-in-cell (PIC) code is then utilized to simulate the 1-D photoelectron sheath and the results agree well with the numerical solution to the semianalytic model. A κ -distribution for solar wind electrons is also implemented to the FD-PIC code to compare with the Maxwellian distribution. Results show that photoelectron sheath may reach as high as close to 100 m above the illuminated flat lunar surface near the terminator region and up to about 50 m near the equator region. Our results show that under average solar wind condition, the photoelectron sheath profiles obtained with Maxwellian and κ -distribution (with κ = 4.5 ) are very close for 1-D numerical results.

Department(s)
Mathematics and Statistics
Second Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Keywords and Phrases
  • Particle-In-Cell (PIC),
  • Photoelectron Sheath,
  • Semianalytic Solution
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
0093-3813; 1939-9375
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Citation
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2021 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), All rights reserved.
Publication Date
9-16-2021
Publication Date
21 Sep 2021
Citation Information
Jianxun Zhao, Xinpeng Wei, Xiaoping Du, Xiaoming He, et al.. "Photoelectron Sheath and Plasma Charging on the Lunar Surface: Semianalytic Solutions and Fully-Kinetic Particle-In-Cell Simulations" IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science Vol. 49 Iss. 10 (2021) p. 3036 - 3050
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/xiaoming-he/94/