Modeling of particle dynamics in a thruster

Numerical solutions to the equations describing the process of ion acceleration in a Hall current plasma accelerator (thruster) are studied. The system itself represents a three-component plasma: neutral atoms, free electrons, and singly-ionized atoms. The ions in the acceleration tract move without collisions, i.e., the length of the free path of ions is larger than that of the acceleration tract, while electrons move in a diffusion mode across the magnetic field. It is shown that in case the Poisson equation for an electric field is used the set of dynamic equations does not have an acoustic peculiarity that appears when solving a quasineutral set when the velocity of the ion flow and the ion-acoustic velocity coincide.