Unified particle simulation technique for the plasma bulk and the cathode sheath of a dc glow discharge

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Abstract
The unified particle simulation of the entire glow discharge including plasma bulk and electrode sheaths suffers from the bad representation of particles in the cathode fall and/or from expensive computing time. To improve the efficiency and reliability of such simulations we develop a splitting procedure for the simulation particles that increases the sampling rate in critical phase space regions. The technique is demonstrated with the help of a simplified model of a dc glow discharge. Simulation particles representing ions and electrons are traced from electrode to electrode by moving the particles in self-consistent fields. For comparison, the same model of the discharge is analyzed in the framework of transport equations. To improve the spatial density profiles of the macroscopic equations, we accounted for nonlocal effects by adjusting the Townsend ionization coefficient with the help of the particle simulation.

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