Equilibrium properties and limiting current behavior of a cusp injected rotating E layer

The equilibrium properties of a cusp injected, hollow, rotating E layer are self-consistently calculated by solving the coupled equations representing conservation of energy, canonical angular momentum, and radial force balance. The particles forming the E layer are emitted from an annular knife-edged cathode, accelerated in the cathode-anode gap, pass through a cusped magnetic field, and propagate into a coaxial conducting wall system. The steady-state equilibrium properties including all self-fields are determined for a given choice of diode parameters, applied cusped magnetic fields, and conducting walls. When only an outer solid conducting wall is considered, a limiting current behavior is observed above a critical magnetic field, whereas, below this critical field, the beam is driven to the wall as the beam intensity increases. When an inner squirrel cage and an outer solid conductor are considered, no limiting current behavior occurs, but the beam is driven to the inner squirrel cage as the beam intensity increases. For this case, equilibria are found to exist above the single particle cutoff field.