Time Resolution of Plasma Potential Using Gridded Electrostatic Analyzers

Abstract

A system is presented for the time resolution of plasma potential using gridded electrostatic analyzers. The novelty of this method is the separation of consecutive current‐energy characteristic curves and their display on a CRT. Using a 20 kHz bias signal, 30–50 consecutive 25 μsec sweeps are displayed on a CRT in a 1 msec time interval. This is sufficient for the study of low frequency plasma fluctuations in transient confinement experiments. Application to the DCX‐2 mirror machine is discussed.