P³M simulations of dusty plasmas

Abstract

In this paper a review of the work on particle simulations of dusty plasmas using a three-dimensional Particle-Particle Particle-Mesh (P 3 M) code is presented. The code is applied to study the charging process of micrometre size dust grains confined in low temperature plasmas. This code gives a full-scale selfconsistent kinetic description of both the background plasma and the charging of the dust particle. Particles (electrons and ions) are treated kinetically (Particlein-Cell with Monte Carlo Collisions (PIC-MCC)), which allows us to selfconsistently resolve the electrostatic sheath in front of the material wall. In order to accurately resolve the plasma particles' motion close to the dust grain, the PIC technique is supplemented with molecular dynamics (MD), employing the Coulomb potential for the interaction with the dust grain. The plasma particle trajectories are accurately followed in the close vicinity of the dust grain and by this finite-size effects for dust grains are included. Dust grain charging due to absorption of plasma particles and ion drag forces arising from momentum transfer of flowing ions to dust grains are studied.

Plasma flow around and charge distribution of a dust cluster in a rf discharge

“…However, most studies assume that dust particles are placed into a homogeneous background plasma with constant ion flow, while also neglecting ion-neutral collisional effects 10,24 . The number of dust particles under investigation were mostly a few and their arrangements often in artificial simple geometry like chains 11,19,25 or regular lattices 19,22,23,26 . The plasma sheath region where the dust grains are located has highly inhomogeneous ion and electron densities, a non-zero electric field, non-Maxwellian electron distribution 27,28 , as well as a complex ion velocity distribution 29 due to their acceleration in the sheath.…”

On the wake structure in streaming complex plasmas

“…Thus, a self-consistent 3D PIC calculation, i.e. a dynamic evolution of the three-dimensional (3D) system with more than one dust grain with a temporal resolution on the electron or ion plasma period time scale, required to ensure self-consistency, easily exceeds the capabilities of current high-performance computing systems [51,56].…”

Dust in Plasma I. Particle Size and Ion‐Neutral Collision Effects

“…Therefore, for very small particles, the model would require more computationally expensive molecular dynamics [15,17] or mixed particle-particle particle-mesh (P 3 M) [46] approaches. As a consequence, a correct charging process simulation requires that Q d /ew 1, that is a dust charge number much larger than macroparticle weight.…”

“…As a consequence, a correct charging process simulation requires that Q d /ew 1, that is a dust charge number much larger than macroparticle weight. Therefore, for very small particles, the model would require more computationally expensive molecular dynamics [15,17] or mixed particle-particle particle-mesh (P 3 M) [46] approaches. Figure 7 shows the ion flux j i = I i /q collected on the particle as a function of the gas pressure for different particle radius.…”