Zeeman splitting measurements of magnetic fields in iodine plasma

Rev Sci Instrum. 2018 Oct;89(10):10C113. doi: 10.1063/1.5038641.

Abstract

Iodine is an attractive propellant for next generation ion thrusters. Laser induced fluorescence (LIF) is widely used with other propellant species as a non-perturbative technique for measuring flow for thruster prediction models. We apply LIF methods recently demonstrated for singly-ionized iodine to a magnetized plasma environment similar to those found in ion thrusters and in magnetically confined laboratory plasmas. We demonstrate the feasibility of remotely determining the local magnetic field from the Zeeman effect-split spectrum of I+.