Resolving Space Plasma Species With Electrostatic Analyzers

Abstract

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Electrostatic analyzers resolve the energy-per-charge distributions of charged plasma particles. Some space plasma instruments use electrostatic analyzers among other units, such as aperture deflectors and position sensitive detectors, in order to resolve the three-dimensional energy (velocity) distribution functions of plasma particles. When these instruments do not comprise a mass analyzer unit, different species can be resolved only if there are measurable differences in their energy-per-charge distributions. This study examines the ability of single electrostatic analyzer systems in resolving co-moving plasma species with different mass-per-charge ratios. We consider examples of static plasma consisting of two species of heavy negative ions measured by a typical electrostatic analyzer design, similar to the electron spectrometer on board Cassini spacecraft. We demonstrate an appropriate modeling technique to simulate the basic features of the instrument response in the specific plasma conditions and we quantify its ability to resolve the key species as a function of the spacecraft speed and the plasma temperature. We show that for the parameter range we examine, the mass resolution increases with increasing spacecraft speed and decreasing plasma temperature. We also demonstrate how our model can analyze real measurements and drive future instrument designs.

Keywords

• plasma physics
• instrumentation
• planetary physics
• Methods
• plasma modeling