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Abstract A key issue in the development of theory and models for plasma propulsion devices is to describe the instabilities and fluctuations of the devices. It has been widely recognized that many Hall effect thrusters (HETs) exhibit oscillations at frequencies in the range of ∼ 20 kHz. These ionization-related oscillations are generally referred to as Breathing Mode oscillations and have been the subject of considerable research. Here, for the first time, we report direct temporally resolved measurements of the ground state neutral density variation during the period of the oscillation. We used the laser-based Two-Photon Absorption Laser Induced Fluorescence (TALIF) technique to measure neutrals within the plume of a 1.5 kW HET operating on krypton (Kr). Our TALIF scheme employs a frequency-doubled, pulsed dye laser operating at ∼ 212 nm to probe ground state Kr atoms. A novel phase-binning approach is used to recover the time-dependent signal by assigning the timing of each collected TALIF signal (laser shot) relative to the phase of the discharge current. We find that the neutral density fluctuates quite strongly over the period of the oscillation, and that this fluctuation leads the current fluctuation as expected.