Computation on collisionless steady-state plasma flow past a charged disk

A computer method is presented using the 'inside-out' approach, for predicting the structure of the disturbed zone near a moving body in space. The approach uses fewer simplifying assumptions than other available methods, and is applicable to large ranges of the values of body and plasma parameters. Two major advances concerning 3-dimensional bodies are that thermal motions of ions as well as of electrons are treated realistically by following their trajectories in the electric field, and the technique for achieving self-consistency is promising for very large bodies. Three sample solutions were obtained for a disk-shaped body, charged negatively to a potential 4kT/e. With ion Mach number 4, and equal ion and electron temperatures, the wakes of a relatively small body (radius 5 Debye lengths) and a relatively large body (radius 100 Debye lengths) both begin to fill up between 2 and 3 body radii downstream. For the large body there is in addition a potential well (about 6kT/e deep) behind the body. Increasing the ion Mach number to 8 for the large body causes the potential well to become wider and longer but not deeper. For the large body, the quasineutrality assumption is validated outside of a cone-shaped region in the very near wake. For the large as well as the small body, the disturbed zone behind the body extends transversely no more than 2 or 3 body radii, a result of significance for the design of spacecraft boom instrumentation.