Bouncing Expansion of the Arc-Cathode Plasma in Vacuum along the Transverse Applied B Field

Measurements of the angular flux distribution of the cathodic arc plasma (I ⩽ 100 A) subjected to a transverse magnetic field (B ⩽ 8.5 × 10-2 T) ae presented. The angular distribution without magnetic field approximately follows the cosine law. Expansion with transverse field is found to deviate strongly from the cosine law, the plasma being confined close to the cathode plane and expanding along the magnetic-field lines. Furthermore, time-resolved photographs of the expansion reveal the predicted pulsating behavior of the expanding plasma.