Orbit limited theory in the solar wind - κ distributions

Abstract

When a solid object is immersed into ionized gas it gets brought to a certain value of electrostatic potential and surrounded by a space charge region called ‘plasma sheath’. Through this region, particles are attracted or repelled from the surface of the charge collecting object. For collisionless plasma, this process is described by the so-called orbit limited theory, which explains how the collection of particles is determined by the collector geometry and plasma velocity distribution function (VDF). In this article, we provide explicit expressions for orbit-limited currents for generalized Lorentzian (κ) distributions. This work is useful to describe the charging processes of objects in non-collisional plasmas like the solar wind, where the electrons VDF is often observed to exhibit quasi power-law populations of suprathermal particles. It is found that these ‘suprathermals’ considerably increase the charge collection. Since the surface charging process that determines the value of electrostatic potential is also affected by the plasma VDF, calculation of the collector potential in the solar wind is described along with some quantitative predictions. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 176002]