Thomson microwave scattering for electron number density diagnostics of miniature plasmas at low pressure

2019/05/15 by Xingxing Wang, Apoorv Ranjan, Wang, Xingxing +7
Engineering · Medicine · Physics and Astronomy · #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Plasma Applications and Diagnostics #Plasma Diagnostics and Applications #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1905.06430

openalex publication_date 2019/05/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

This work proposes a novel method of Thomson microwave scattering for electron number density measurements of miniature plasmas at pressures < 10 Torr. This method is applied to determine electron number density in a positive column of glow discharge initiated at 5 Torr in air with a plasma column diameter of 3.4 mm. The Thomson Microwave Scattering(TMS) system measured the electron number density to be 3.36*10¹0 cm^-3. The result obtained using the TMS system was validated against the measurements made using the well-known technique of microwave quarter-wave hairpin resonator. Measurements with the hairpin resonator yielded an electron number density of 2.07*10¹0 cm^-3 providing adequate agreement with the TMS system.

Related

• Thomson and Collisional Regimes of In-Phase Coherent Microwave Scattering Off Gaseous Microplasmas
• Electron Density Measurement with Hairpin Resonator in Low Pressure Plasma
• Development of the Thomson scattering measurement system for cascade arc device with indirectly heated hollow cathode
• Microsecond resolved electron density measurements with a hairpin resonator probe in a pulsed ICP discharge
• Thomson scattering diagnostic at the gas dynamic trap