Electrostatic Thermal Noise in Magnetized Weakly Ionized Collisional Plasmas
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Authors
Zheng, X.
Martinović, M.M.
Klein, K.G.
Pierrard, V.
Liu, M.
Ember, W.
Wu, T.
Wang, Y.
Li, J.
Yu, B.
Xue, X.
Discipline
Physical sciences
Subject
plasma collision
Audience
Scientific
Date
2026Metadata
Show full item recordDescription
Quasi-thermal noise (QTN) spectroscopy is a plasma diagnostic technique that enables precise measurements of moments for the local electron velocity distribution function. Previous studies on the QTN technique applied to weakly ionized collisional plasma were limited by the assumptions of unmagnetized and Maxwellian distributions. In this paper, we extend prior research by considering collisional and a secondary hot Maxwellian distribution. Further analysis indicates that as the collision frequency increases, the peak power spectral density at the electron plasma frequency fp decreases. In addition, we find that the influence of collisions on low-frequency cyclotron harmonic signals in a magnetized plasma is mainly related to the plasma-to-electron cyclotron frequency ratio ωpe/Ωce but also has non-trivial dependencies on the plasma Debye Length LD. Finally, we observed that in eight representative cases, the plasma harmonic disappearance frequency ratio is generally ∼0.25. Our research provides valuable theoretical guidance for the future application of QTN techniques in detecting plasma parameters, especially for collision frequencies typical of Earth's ionosphere.
Citation
Zheng, X.; Martinović, M.M.; Klein, K.G.; Pierrard, V.; Liu, M.; Ember, W.; Wu, T.; Wang, Y.; Li, J.; Yu, B.; Xue, X. (2026). Electrostatic Thermal Noise in Magnetized Weakly Ionized Collisional Plasmas. , Journal of Geophysical Research: Space Physics, Vol. 131, Issue 1, e2025JA034176, DOI: 10.1029/2025JA034176.Identifiers
url:
Type
Article
Peer-Review
Yes
Language
eng
