Stangeby and Allen (1970) have demonstrated that the plasma-sheath boundary is a Mach surface in a collisionless plasma containing an anisotropic cold ion velocity distribution and no ionization. It is shown that the plasma-sheath boundary is still a Mach surface even when the effects of ionization, momentum-transferring collisions and a finite ion temperature are considered.
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Andrews et al. (1970) studied this question.
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