Collisionless Currents for Cylindric Probes in a Plasma with non‐Maxwellian Distribution of the Electron Energy

Abstract

Abstract The radial model developed by Allen, Boyd, Reynolds and Chen [1, 2] for the ion collection of Langmuir probes is extended to describe the case of a non‐Maxwellian distribution of the electron energy. Assuming standard distributions, showing with respect to the Maxwell distribution an increasing deficite of fast electrons as the parameter k of the distribution increases, the electron‐retarded current characteristic, the potential distribution and the density profiles for electrons and ions in the probe sheath, ion‐current characteristics as well as graphs for the ion‐density determination are calculated for different k . It is shown, that the application of the Chen model ( k = 1) in plasma with k > 1 leads only to a small error in the ion‐density measurement.