🚀 Hall Effect Thrusters

About this simulation

A Hall effect thruster is a form of electric propulsion used on satellites and deep-space probes. Xenon gas is fed into an annular ceramic channel where a hot cathode supplies electrons that ionize the propellant. A radial magnetic field traps those electrons, forcing them into a circulating "Hall current" instead of drifting straight to the anode. That trapped electron cloud sets up a strong axial electric field, which accelerates the much heavier xenon ions out of the channel at high speed to produce thrust.

How it works

• Crossed E×B fields — the radial magnetic field and axial electric field are perpendicular, so electrons drift azimuthally around the channel instead of reaching the anode directly.
• Ion acceleration — ions are far too massive to be trapped by the magnetic field, so they simply "fall" down the electric potential and exit at high velocity.
• Neutralization — the same external cathode also injects electrons into the exhaust plume so the spacecraft doesn't accumulate net charge.
• Real thrusters like the SPT-100 produce only tens to hundreds of millinewtons of thrust, but can run continuously for months, giving huge total velocity change per kilogram of propellant.

Controls

• Magnetic field — strength of the radial confinement field as a percentage of maximum.
• Propellant flow — xenon mass flow rate in milligrams per second.
• Discharge voltage — the anode-to-cathode potential, which sets ion exhaust velocity.
• Field lines / cutaway toggles — reveal the magnetic circuit and the inside of the discharge channel.

Did you know?

Hall thrusters get their name from the Hall effect discovered by Edwin Hall in 1879 — the same underlying E×B drift physics used here to trap electrons was originally observed as a sideways voltage across a current-carrying conductor in a magnetic field.