Space-Time Plasma Steering Source: Synthesis and Outlooks

The aim of this paper is to present the promising outlooks that lies ahead for the innovative plasma source we introduced recently. The idea of this source is to dynamically control the plasma location by changing the waveform of the transmitted signal to an overmoded cavity. It is then the behavior of the waves inside the cavity that dynamically control the plasma location, hence the name of Space-Time Plasma Steering Source. Since its introduction in 2019, we have produced three main papers, aimed at different scientific communities: applied physics, physics of plasma, signal processing and mathematical and numerical methods. An overview of these works is first presented in this paper. Then, the promising outlooks for this unusual plasma source are identified and classified into four domains, among which the most important and essential one being the unhooking of the plasmas from the initiators in order to control their location anywhere in the cavity. Several solutions for this “unhooking issue” are then proposed, the most straightforward one being the use of non-intrusive probes.