Supersonic plasma flow near a point charge

A hydrodynamic supersonic plasma jet near a point charge is analysed. The plasma jet is continuous in the field of a negative charge and discontinuous in the field of a positive charge. For a copper plasma with an initial concentration of ni0=1020 m-3 and a jet velocity of 1.5x104 m s-1, the thickness of the charge separation layer is about 50D, where D is the Debye length. A shock front forms whose location depends on the point charge eZpc; for Zpc = +5 and +10, the shock is located 0.43x10-2 and 0.71x10-2 cm, respectively, upstream of the point charge. (author)