Potential and electron density calculated for freely expanding plasma by an electron beam

Abstract

This paper investigates the radial distributions of potential and electron density in free expansion plasma induced by an electron beam irradiating on the plate. The region of plasma production is assumed to be cylindrical, and the plasma expansion is assumed to be from a cylindrical source. Therefore, the one-dimensional model in cylindrical coordinates is employed in order to analyze the radial distributions of the potential and electron density. The Runge–Kutta method and the perturbation method are utilized in order to obtain the numerical and approximate solutions, respectively. The results reveal that the decrease in the initial ion energy makes most of the ions gather near the plasma production region and reduces the distribution of the average positive potential, electron, and ion density along the radial direction. The oscillation of steady-state plasma along the radial direction is also presented in this paper. The ions induce a larger amplitude of oscillation along the radial direction than do electrons because the electrons oscillate around slowly moving ions due to a far smaller electron mass than ion mass. The radial distributions of the positive potential and electron density predicted from this study are compared with the available experimental data.