Discharge phenomenon on solar array surface due to RF irradiation

Space solar power system (SSPS) transfers enormous amount of electrical energy of microwave. As the microwave may diffract to solar array surface, there is concern of multipactor discharge caused by the microwave. There has been no experiment on interaction between high intensity microwave and solar array. The verification experiment is essential for SSPS to become a reality. We examined interaction between solar array surface and microwave in a vacuum chamber. We investigated a discharge phenomenon on the solar array surface that receives RF irradiation with 400W maximum power and 5.8GHz frequency generated by a magnetron. We observed discharge on solar array depending on the microwave strength and vacuum condition. The discharge occurred mostly at N-electrodes of solar cells that acted as an antenna as good as a dipole antenna. We calculated the distribution of electric field inside the chamber by finite difference time domain method