PIC Modeling of Coulomb Collisional Effects in a Wall-Bounded Plasma

Abstract

Collisions between particles in a hot plasma can be ignored in many high-temperature plasma simulations. However, at lower temperatures, collisional effects play a significant role in determining the plasma's overall behavior. While fluid modeling can accurately capture collisional effects (with some limitations), proper definition of boundary conditions for fluid modeling depend on accurate assumptions about the kinetic (real) behavior of plasma near material surfaces, where the plasma sheath dominates the plasma behavior. This thesis project is an attempt to develop a tool to elucidate sheath and presheath plasma behavior in the presence of strong collisional effects. Using the Particle In Cell (PIC) method, a Coulomb collisional model is implemented to study near-surface plasma behavior. The information gleaned from this project could provide important refinement of boundary conditions for fluid codes, and more generally, insights into kinetic behavior of the collisional plasma sheath.