Manipulating the electron distribution through a combination of electron injection and MacKenzie's Maxwell Demon

Experiments on electron heating are performed in a biased hot filament-produced argon plasma. Electrons are confined by multi-dipole magnetic fields on the radial wall of the cylindrical chamber but not the planar end walls. Electron heating is provided by a combination of cold electron injection (Hershowitz N and Leung K N 1975 Appl. Phys. Lett. 26 607) and a MacKenzie Maxwell Demon (Mackenzie K R et al 1971 Appl. Phys. Lett. 18 529). This approach allows the manipulation of the electrons by introducing a depleted tail into the electron energy distribution function or by removing a depleted tail. It is found that the injected electrons mimic and thermalize with the electron species with the closest average energy or temperature. The effect of the injected electrons is optimal when they mimic the secondary electrons emitted from the wall instead of the degraded primary electrons. Both approaches combine to achieve increases in electron temperature T-e from 0.67 to 2.8 eV, which was not significantly higher than using each approach alone.