Evolution of electron temperature in low pressure magnetized capacitive plasma

Abstract

The evolution of electron temperature in a low pressure magnetized capacitive discharge was investigated under the collisionless electron heating regime. The results showed that while the electron temperature increases monotonously with the magnetic field in previous study [Turner et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 2069(1996)], the electron temperature in our experiment exhibited nonmonotonic evolution behavior with the magnetic field. This nonmonotonic evolution of the electron temperature with the magnetic field was shown to be a combined effect of suppressing electron resonance heating and enhancing collisional heating while increasing the magnetic field. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3309589]