Research on plasma electron density distribution based on microwave diffraction

In this paper, a non-contact plasma microwave diffraction measurement method is proposed, which can obtain the electron density at different diameters of the cylindrical plasma. There is a lot of diffraction when a non-focused antenna is used to transmit plasma. As we all know, when the frequency of the incident microwave is lower than the characteristic frequency of the plasma, the microwave cannot be transmitted through the plasma, so this interface can be regarded as a metal. According to the microwave diffraction of the plasma, the size of the plasma correspond-ing to the characteristic frequency can be obtained. Furthermore, by sweeping the incident elec-tromagnetic wave, the size of plasma with different characteristic frequencies can be obtained, and the distribution of electron density can be obtained. To verify the method, a cylindrical plasma was measured by microwave diffraction, in which the electron density of the plasma column gradually decreased along the increase in radius. According to the diffraction of the plasma column at different frequencies, the distribution of the electron density along the diame-ter is obtained. And compared with the transmission diagnosis method, the validity and accuracy of this method are verified. In non-uniform high-temperature plasma, the diffraction method greatly improves the accuracy of spatial diagnosis compared with traditional transmission diag-nosis.