Toyofumi Yamauchi, The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Electric Propulsion Lab | Space Technology

A shining plasma in vacuum chamber: This is the picture of Argon plasma in the vacuum chamber. Plasma is everywhere (>99% of matter in space is plasma), and we have utilized it in our life, e.g., in space propulsion technology. However, we do not understand it all, and we have not obtained its full capability. We studied the dynamic behavior of the plasma through the newly developed computational simulation and lab experiments. Argon plasma is one of the most common plasmas in the lab and has been used by researchers for over a half-century, but it still gives me a lot of new insights to us. This picture evokes both a history of plasma physics research and a future of plasma technology. | Contributors: Toyofumi Yamauchi, Joshua L. Rovey, Nakul Nuwal, Deborah A. Levin