Expansion of a plasma injected from an electrodeless gun along a magnetic field

The dynamics of a plasma injected from an electrodeless plasma gun (conical theta pinch) into a longitudinal magnetic field is studied theoretically. For the experiments referred to, conditions are collisionless for the ions and range from collision dominated to collisionless for the electrons. During the expansion of the injected plasma the electrons are trapped by an ambipolar electric field maintaining charge neutrality and a magnetic mirror at the gun. The development of the ion and electron distribution functions for the completely collisionless case is considered in detail.