Multiple valued floating potentials of Langmuir probes

Abstract
It is shown that Langmuir probes can have three different floating potentials in plasmas produced by a hot filament discharge in a multi-dipole device when the primary and secondary electron currents are comparable. The measured floating potential depends on the probe’s initial condition—the most negative and the least negative potentials are found to be stable and the in-between value is found to be unstable. Results are compared to a simple theoretical model.

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