Analysis and simulation for a model of electron impact excitation/deexcitation and ionization/recombination

Journal Article · Thu Oct 15 04:00:00 EDT 2015 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCP.2015.07.027· OSTI ID:22465672

Yan, Bokai ^[1]; Barekat, Farzin ^[1]; Cambier, Jean-Luc ^[2]

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1. Mathematics Department, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1555 (United States)
2. Air Force Research Laboratory, Edwards AFB, CA 93524 (United States)

This paper describes a kinetic model and a corresponding Monte Carlo simulation method for excitation/deexcitation and ionization/recombination by electron impact in a plasma free of external fields. The atoms and ions in the plasma are represented by continuum densities and the electrons by a particle distribution. A Boltzmann-type equation is formulated and a corresponding H-theorem is formally derived. An efficient Monte Carlo method is developed for an idealized analytic model of the excitation and ionization collision cross sections. To accelerate the simulation, the reduced rejection method and binary search method are used to overcome the singular rate in the recombination process. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the efficiency of the method on spatially homogeneous problems. The evolution of the electron distribution function and atomic states is studied, revealing the possibility under certain circumstances of system relaxation towards stationary states that are not the equilibrium states, a potential non-ergodic behavior.

• OSTI ID: 22465672
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Vol. 299; ISSN JCTPAH; ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING
ATOMS
BOLTZMANN EQUATION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
CROSS SECTIONS
DE-EXCITATION
DISTRIBUTION FUNCTIONS
ELECTRONS
EXCITATION
H THEOREM
IONIZATION
IONS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PLASMA
REACTION KINETICS
RECOMBINATION
RELAXATION