Development and benchmark of a 1d3v electrostatic PIC/MCC numerical code for gas discharge simulations

Abstract

: Gas discharge plasmas are low-temperature nonequilibrium plasmas that have a wide range of scientific and technological applications. The particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo collision (PIC/MCC) method is a reliable approach for numerical analyses and simulations of such plasmas. In this study, we first provide a detailed description of the basics of this method. We then verify the programme code that we developed in Fortran by benchmarking the code against a widely referred reference study simulating a radiofrequency capacitively coupled plasma (RFCCP) in helium for various discharge conditions. We show that the results of the present study are in good agreement with that of the reference benchmark study. We also demonstrate that although PIC/MCC is a computationally demanding method, it is still possible to conduct some one-dimensional plasma simulations with standard personal computers within hours, thanks to recent advancements in computing technologies. More rigorous and especially high-dimensional problems, however, require acceleration and parallelization strategies.