Secondary emission from small dust grains at high electron energies

A previous model for secondary electron emission from small grains is modified to calculate yields for micron sized grains, both spherical and cylindrical, when the primary electrons constitute a high energy parallel beam. It is found that, in general, the secondary electron yield is significantly higher than for the case of normal incidence. Moreover, the equilibrium potentials of the grain are always positive due to this enhanced secondary emission. These results are compared with experimental data recently available for micron sized glass particles, and equilibrium potentials, calculated based on the model presented here, and are found to be in reasonably good agreement with their measured potentials. >

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