Simulating a low-temperature Maxwellian plasma using SH-HtscEBIT

Abstract This paper reports an experimental realization of a low-temperature quasi-Maxwell–Boltzmann plasma in an electron beam ion trap (EBIT) by employing a special energy sweep technique. A Maxwellian C IV plasma with electron temperatures in the range 10–40 eV is simulated in the Shanghai high-temperature superconducting EBIT (SH-HtscEBIT), which requires stable performance of the EBIT under the extreme condition of ultralow electron beam energy. The C IV spectra are obtained by an extreme ultraviolet spectrometer in the wavelength region 290–400 A. The measured spectral line intensity ratios are compared with the results of calculations using a collisional-radiative model. The mean difference between the experimental and theoretical results in the simulated temperature region is about 14%.