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An experiment on the formation of virtual electrode and ion sheath characteristics has been carried out in a hot cathode discharge plasma produced inside a cylindrical inertial electrostatic confinement fusion device. The plasma parameters such as electron temperature and plasma density are evaluated by using a Langmuir probe. Transition from a single potential well to multiple potential wells, i.e., virtual electrodes inside the cathode grid, is observed when the bias voltage applied to the cathode is increased from –1000 to –5000 V. An emissive probe has been used for the measurement of plasma potential due to its greater accuracy than the conventional Langmuir probe. Ion sheath potential structures and presheath characteristics for different cathode potentials have been investigated using the emissive probe and are found to be consistent with the Debye sheath model. A detailed discussion on the obtained results has been presented in this paper.

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