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The Influence of Varying Spacecraft Potentials and Debye Lengths on In Situ Low‐Energy Ion Measurements
Author(s) -
Bergman Sofia,
Stenberg Wieser Gabriella,
Wieser Martin,
Johansson Fredrik Leffe,
Eriksson Anders
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
journal of geophysical research: space physics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2169-9402
pISSN - 2169-9380
DOI - 10.1029/2020ja027870
Subject(s) - spacecraft , ion , distortion (music) , debye length , physics , plasma , spacecraft charging , energy (signal processing) , sensitivity (control systems) , atomic physics , computational physics , astronomy , optoelectronics , quantum mechanics , engineering , amplifier , cmos , electronic engineering
Low‐energy ions are difficult to measure, mainly due to spacecraft charging. The ions are attracted to or repelled from the charged surface prior to detection, which changes both the energy and travel direction of the ions. This results in distortions of the data, and the changed travel directions distort the effective field of view (FOV) of the instrument performing the measurements. The ion composition analyzer (RPC‐ICA) was measuring positive ions down to an energy of a few eV around comet 67P/Churyumov‐Gerasimenko. Low‐energy ions play important parts in processes in the cometary environment, but the FOV of RPC‐ICA has been shown to get severely distorted at low ion energies. Several factors are believed to affect the distortion level. In this study we use the Spacecraft Plasma Interaction Software (SPIS) to investigate the influence of varying spacecraft potentials and Debye lengths on the FOV distortion of RPC‐ICA. We show that the distortion level is dependent on the Debye length of the surrounding plasma, but the sensitivity varies substantially between different viewing directions of the instrument. We also show that a small nonlinearity exists in the relation between FOV distortion, ion energy, and spacecraft potential, mainly caused by the photoemission and bulk flow of the cometary plasma.