Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Physics Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Plasma and Beam Physics

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

2012

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Physics

Identifying Signatures Of Plasma Waves And Reconnection Associated With Kelvin-Helmholtz Activity, Thomas Wesley Moore Aug 2012

Identifying Signatures Of Plasma Waves And Reconnection Associated With Kelvin-Helmholtz Activity, Thomas Wesley Moore

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The magnetopause marks the boundary between the shocked solar wind and magnetospheric plasma. Understanding the dynamics of the plasma processes at the magnetopause boundary is crucial to the study of plasma transport into the magnetosphere. Previous studies have shown that there exists a temperature asymmetry in the plasma sheet. During northward IMF, the cold component ions are 30-40% hotter in the dawn flank plasma sheet compared to the dusk flank. However, the mechanisms responsible are still not entirely clear. Recent work has shown that reconnection in Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices can transport plasma into the magnetosphere. Previous studies have also shown that …


Contamination Effects On Fixed-Bias Langmuir Probes, C.T. Steigies, Aroh Barjatya Jan 2012

Contamination Effects On Fixed-Bias Langmuir Probes, C.T. Steigies, Aroh Barjatya

Publications

Langmuir probes are standard instruments for plasma density measurements on many sounding rockets. These probes can be operated in swept-bias as well as in fixed-bias modes. In swept-bias Langmuir probes, contamination effects are frequently visible as a hysteresis between consecutive up and down voltage ramps. This hysteresis, if not corrected, leads to poorly determined plasma densities and temperatures. With a properly chosen sweep function, the contamination parameters can be determinedfromthemeasurementsandcorrectplasmaparameterscanthenbedetermined.Inthispaper, we study the contamination effects on fixed-bias Langmuir probes, where no hysteresis type effect is seen in the data. Even though the contamination is not evident from the measurements, it …