Flowing electron plasmas as modified current source

Probing of streaming electron plasmas with finite temperature is studied. Due to the fast flow of the electron plasmas, the characteristic curve spreads out significantly and exhibits a long tail. Another significant feature of the characteristic is that it determines a floating potential where the current equals zero, despite there being very few ions in the electron plasma. A high impedance probe, which is popularly used to determine the space potential of electron plasmas, outputs the potential. The method is available only for plasmas with density much smaller than the Brillouin limit