Implicit electrostatic particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo simulation for the magnetized plasma: Algorithms and application in gas-inductive breakdown

Abstract

An implicit electrostatic particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo (PIC/MC) algorithm is developed for the magnetized discharging device simulation. The inductive driving force can be considered. The direct implicit PIC algorithm (DIPIC) and energy conservation scheme are applied together and the grid heating can be eliminated in most cases. A tensor-susceptibility Poisson equation is constructed. Its discrete form is made up by a hybrid scheme in one-dimensional (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) cylindrical systems. A semi-coarsening multigrid method is used to solve the discrete system. The algorithm is applied to simulate the cylindrical magnetized target fusion (MTF) pre-ionization process and get qualitatively correct results. The potential application of the algorithm is discussed briefly.

Influence of magnetic field gradient on the capacitive argon discharge at 8 MHz and 40 MHz

“…Compared with the explicit code, the implicit method can take larger space and time steps, which will greatly reduce the workload of the computer and keep the calculation accurate. This is conducive to experimental exploration, therefore, the one-dimensional implicit method is widely explored and optimized by researchers [11,39,40]. MCC code is adopted for the collision between charge particles and background gas in the simulation.…”

Influence of magnetic field strength on capacitively coupled CF4 discharge at different pressures

“…In this work, a one-dimensional in space and threedimensional in velocity space (1D3V) PIC/MCC method is adopted. The code has been widely tested in previous works and benchmarked against results of other PIC/MCC simulations and experiments [38][39][40][41][42]. For the electronegative CF 4 discharge, the simulation takes a very long time to reach the steady state.…”

The influence of weak transverse magnetic field on plasma dissipation process in the post-arc phase in a vacuum interrupter

“…In our 1D3V implicit PIC/MCC simulation code [40], the position and velocity information are updated alternately, where velocity is updated with a full 3D electromagnetic field; therefore, the E×B drift is included in the phase space [37]. Nevertheless, owing to the E×B drift, space charge separation will occur, resulting in an electric field along the direction of E×B [38].…”