Plasma produced by impacts of fast dust particles on a thin film

The thin-film impact plasma detector was pioneered by Berg for detecting small cosmic dust particles and measuring their approximate velocities in a time-of-flight configuration. While Berg's device was highly successful in establishing the flux of interplanetary dust, the accuracy of measuring the velocities of individual particles was a moderate 18 percent in magnitude and 27 degrees in angle. A much greater accuracy of less than or equal to 1 percent in determining the velocity components appears desirable in order to associate a particle with its parent body. In order to meet that need, research was initiated to determine if a thin-film detector can be designed to provide such accurate velocity measurements. Previous laboratory investigations of the impact plasma uncovered two difficulties: (1) solid or liquid spray is ejected from a primary impact crater and strikes neighboring walls where it produces secondary impact craters and plasma clouds; as a result, both quantity and time of detection of the plasma can vary significantly with the experiment configuration. Particles from an accelerator rarely have speeds v greater than or equal to 10-15 km/s, while cosmic dust particles typically impact at v = 10-72 km/s. The purpose of the tests discussed in this paper was to resolve the two difficulties mentioned. That is, the experiment configuration was designed to reduce the contribution of plasma from secondary impacts. In addition, most particles with v less than or equal to 25 km/s and all particles with v less than or equal to 10 km/s were eliminated from the beam.