Control of Beam Energy and Flux Ratio in an Ion-Beam-Background Plasma System Produced in a Double Plasma Device

Plasmas containing ion beams have various applications both in plasma technology and in fundamental research. The ion beam energy and flux are the two factors characterizing the beam properties. Previous studies have not achieved the independent adjustment of these two parameters. In this paper, an ion-beam-background-plasma system was produced with hot-cathode discharge in a double plasma device separated by two adjacent grids, with which the beam energy and flux ratio (the ratio between the beam flux and total ion flux) can be controlled independently. It is shown that the discharge voltage (i.e., voltage across the hot-cathode and anode) and the voltage drop between the two separation grids can be used to effectively control the beam energy while the flux ratio is not affected by these voltages. The flux ratio depends sensitively on hot-filaments heating current whose influence on the beam energy is relatively weak, and thus enabling approximate control of the flux ratio