Verifying effects of instability enhanced ion–ion Coulomb collisions on ion velocity distribution functions near the sheath edge in low temperature plasmas

Experiments have shown that ion velocity distribution functions (ivdfs) with non-Maxwellian tails created by ion–neutral collisions and ionizations along pre-sheaths in weakly collisional plasmas can be thermalized into Maxwellian distributions near the sheath edge. A recent theory suggests that ion–ion collisions enhanced by ion-acoustic instabilities can rapidly thermalize ions near the sheath edge into Maxwellian distributions and that increasing either electron temperature or neutral pressure of a plasma suppresses the growth of instabilities and eliminates the thermalization process. Measurements of ivdfs by laser induced fluorescence showed qualitative agreement between experimental data and a marginal stability curve inferred from the new theory.