Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna - Theoretical and Numerical Investigation of the Plasma Dynamics under a Novel Acceleration Scheme

The researcher will be responsible for the development of numerical simulation codes for plasmas subjected to time-varying electromagnetic fields in the geometries relevant to a novel acceleration concept. The development effort will focus on (i) reduced-order fluid and particle-based models to investigate macroscopic phenomena, and (ii) high-fidelity codes to study particularly critical regions of the discharge, where significant kinetic effects are expected to occur. The researcher will also be responsible for integrating experimental data into the numerical framework for the calibration of the models and the extrapolation of thruster performance.