A Critical Study on the Reliability of Electron Temperature Measurements with a Langmuir Probe

Abstract

Electron temperature deduced from a contaminated Langmuir probe is discussed. Laboratory and rocket experiments show that electron temperature evaluation is higher than the true value when the probe has a contaminated surface. It is concluded that the high temperature of the E-region is also due to the use of such a contaminated Langmuir probe. Hysteresis phenomenon can be explained by means of the simple equivalent circuit for the contamination layer of a probe surface.