Revisiting the Anomalous rf Field Penetration into a Warm Plasma

Technical Report · Fri Jun 24 04:00:00 EDT 2005

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/841198· OSTI ID:841198

Kaganovich, Igor D ^[1]; Polomarov, Oleg V; Theodosiou, Constantine E

---

1. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory

Radio-frequency [rf] waves do not penetrate into a plasma and are damped within it. The electric field of the wave and plasma current are concentrated near the plasma boundary in a skin layer. Electrons can transport the plasma current away from the skin layer due to their thermal motion. As a result, the width of the skin layer increases when electron temperature effects are taken into account. This phenomenon is called anomalous skin effect. The anomalous penetration of the rf electric field occurs not only for transversely propagating to the plasma boundary wave (inductively coupled plasmas) but also for the wave propagating along the plasma boundary (capacitively coupled plasmas). Such anomalous penetration of the rf field modifies the structure of the capacitive sheath. Recent advances in the nonlinear, non-local theory of the capacitive sheath are reported. It is shown that separating the electric field profile into exponential and non-exponential parts yields an efficient qualitative and quantitative description of the anomalous skin effect in both inductively and capacitively coupled plasma.

• Research Organization: Princeton Plasma Physics Lab., Princeton, NJ (US)
• Sponsoring Organization: US Department of Energy; USDOE Office of Science (SC) (US)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-76CH03073
• OSTI ID: 841198
• Report Number(s): PPPL-4085
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
ELECTRIC CURRENTS
ELECTRIC FIELDS
ELECTRON TEMPERATURE
ELECTRONS
PLASMA
RF HEATING
SKIN EFFECT
TRANSPORT
WAVE ABSORPTION
WAVE INTERACTION
PLASMA