Abstract
This paper presents a modeling and simulation study of the photoelectron sheath near uneven lunar surface. A fully kinetic 3-D finite-difference (FD) particle-in-cell (PIC) code is utilized to simulate the plasma interaction with local uneven surface terrain on the lunar surface in 2-D photoelectron sheaths. The code is first validated using a 1-D plasma charging and sheath problem by comparing with a semi-analytic solution. Good agreement is obtained. The 2-D FD-PIC simulations present the distributions of electric potential and charged species densities near the uneven lunar surface. It shows that the surface potential is highly influenced by the exposure to sunlight and local Sun elevation angle. Under average solar wind conditions, exposure to sunlight could lead to a positive surface potential with a magnitude of tens of volts, whereas the lack of sunlight results in a negative surface potential of several volts.
Recommended Citation
J. Zhao et al., "Fully-Kinetic Particle-In-Cell Simulations of Photoelectron Sheath on Uneven Lunar Surface," Proceedings of the AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum, pp. 1 - 14, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), Jan 2021.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-1433
Meeting Name
AIAA Scitech 2021 Forum (2021 Jan. 11-15, 19-21, Virtual)
Department(s)
Mathematics and Statistics
Second Department
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Research Center/Lab(s)
Center for High Performance Computing Research
International Standard Book Number (ISBN)
978-162410609-5
Document Type
Article - Conference proceedings
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2021 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Publication Date
21 Jan 2021
