A Developed Mechanism for the Measurement of the Plasma Density Along a Surface Wave Excited Plasma Column

This paper is focused on the development of a new mechanism for the measurement of the plasma density along a surface wave excited plasma column. In the proposed method, based on the measurement of the phase differences between the probes of a phase difference detector microchip, the propagation constant and consequently the plasma density distribution along the column is estimated. For validation, an analytical technique is used to determine the plasma density along a plasma antenna. Good agreement between the analytical and measurement results validates the proposed measurement technique.