English

The effect of thermophoresis on the discharge parameters in complex plasma experiments

Plasma Physics 2015-05-20 v1

Abstract

Thermophoresis is a tool often applied in complex plasma experiments. One of the usual stated benefits over other experimental tools is that changes induced by thermophoresis neither directly depend on, nor directly influence, the plasma parameters. From electronic data, plasma emission profiles in the sheath, and Langmuir probe data in the plasma bulk, we conclude that this assumption does not hold. An important effect on the levitation of dust particles in argon plasma is observed as well. The reason behind the changes in plasma parameters seems to be the change in neutral atom density accompanying the increased gas temperature while running at constant pressure.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1010.4319,
  title  = {The effect of thermophoresis on the discharge parameters in complex plasma experiments},
  author = {Victor Land and Jorge Carmona-Reyes and James Creel and Jimmy Schmoke and Mike Cook and Lorin Matthews and Truell Hyde},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1010.4319},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

14 pages, 12 figures