Measurement realities of current collection in dynamic space plasma environments

Theories which describe currents collected by conducting and non-conducting bodies immersed in plasmas have many of their concepts based upon the fundamentals of sheath-potential distributions and charged-particle behavior in superimposed electric and magnetic fields. Those current-collecting bodies (or electrodes) may be Langmuir probes, electric field detectors, aperture plates on ion mass spectrometers and retarding potential analyzers, or spacecraft and their rigid and tethered appendages. Often the models are incomplete in representing the conditions under which the current-voltage characteristics of the electrode and its system are to be measured. In such cases, the experimenter must carefully take into account magnetic field effects and particle anisotropies, perturbations caused by the current collection process itself and contamination on electrode surfaces, the complexities of non-Maxwellian plasma distributions, and the temporal variability of the local plasma density, temperature, composition and fields. This set of variables is by no means all-inclusive, but it represents a collection of circumstances guaranteed to accompany experiments involving energetic particle beams, plasma discharges, chemical releases, wave injection and various events of controlled and uncontrolled spacecraft charging. Here, an attempt is made to synopsize these diagnostic challenges and frame them within a perspective that focuses on the physics under investigation and the requirements on the parameters to be measured. Examples include laboratory and spaceborne applications, with specific interest in dynamic and unstable plasma environments.