Energetic Ion Effects on the Ion Saturation Current**Supported by the Program of Fusion Reactor Physics and Digital Tokamak with the Chinese Academy of Sciences ‘One-Three-Five’ Strategic Planning, the JSPS-NRF-NSFC A3 Foresight Program in the Field of Plasma Physics (NSFC No 11261140328 and NRF No 2012K2A2A6000443), the National ITER Program of China under Grant No 2015GB101003, and the National Natural Science

Abstract

The ion saturation current is very important in probe theory, which can be used to measure the electron temperature and the floating potential. In this work, the effects of energetic ions on the ion saturation current are studied via particle-in-cell simulations. It is found that the energetic ions and background ions can be treated separately as different species, and they satisfy their individual Bohm criterion at the sheath edge. It is shown that the energetic ions can significantly affect the ion saturation current if their concentration is greater than , where is the electron temperature, and and represent the polytropic coefficient and temperature of energetic ions, respectively. As a result, the floating potential and the I V characteristic profile are strongly influenced by the energetic ions. When the energetic ion current dominates the ion saturation current, an analysis of the ion saturation current will yield the energetic ion temperature rather than the electron temperature.