Attenuation of Solar Energetic Particles By Wave-Particle Interaction With an Ion Thruster Plume

Solar energetic particles (SEP) are a significant concern for interplanetary human spaceflight. This work investigates wave-particle interactions caused by the incidence of a beam of energetic protons, representing a notional SEP event, onto a cloud of xenon ions, representing a notional ion thruster plume. The resulting electromagnetic ion/ion instability is developed to investigate the degree to which energetic protons can be scattered out of the initial beam.