English

Data Processing Techniques for Ion and Electron Energy Distribution Functions

Plasma Physics 2023-04-19 v1 Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability Instrumentation and Detectors

Abstract

Retarding field energy analyzers and Langmuir probes are routinely used to obtain ion and electron energy distribution functions (IEDF, EEDF). These typically require knowledge of the first and second derivatives of the I-V characteristics, both of which can be obtained in various ways. This poses challenges inherent to differentiating noisy signals, a frequent problem with electric-probe plasma diagnostics. A brief review of commonly used analog and numerical filtering and differentiation techniques is presented, together with their application on experimental data collected in a radio-frequency plasma. The application of each method is detailed with regards to the obtained IEDF and EEDF, the deduced plasma parameters, dynamic range, energy resolution and signal distortion.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2211.03254,
  title  = {Data Processing Techniques for Ion and Electron Energy Distribution Functions},
  author = {Antonella Caldarelli and Félicien Filleul and Rod Boswell and Christine Charles and Nicholas Rattenbury and John Cater},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2211.03254},
  year   = {2023}
}

Comments

A.C. and F.F. are co-first authors. The following article has been submitted to Physics of Plasmas. After it is published, it will be found at https://aip.scitation.org/journal/php

R2 v1 2026-06-28T05:17:45.177Z