I got the probe tested with the leak-checker, and it seemed in good shape. I installed it back into our chamber, brought down the pressure, and tested it again; everything went well. The pressure will stabilize overnight, and I'll need to bake the plasma for a few hours tomorrow to get rid of anything that may have gotten in when I opened the chamber up. Unlike the previous times, though, I left the nitrogen flowing when I opened it to keep a steady stream of gas leaving the chamber whenever the chamber was not sealed. This should have significantly reduced the amount of junk that managed to get in while I was swapping in the probe and greasing the O-rings.
Since I have had consistent dust acoustic waves in the chamber since we fixed the leak, I should be able to generate a pulse on top of that wave as soon as the plasma settles tomorrow. Hopefully I can get something interesting!
Besides probe-related stuff, I spent most of today writing a graphical user interface for my MATLAB code that analyzes the videos I take. Not too exciting, but it means that I'll hopefully be able to stop mucking about at the command line and visualize the waves better.
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