Application of sparse grid combination techniques to low temperature plasmas particle-in-cell simulations.Ⅰ. Capacitively coupled radio frequency discharges

摘要

The use of a particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithm with an explicit scheme to model low temperature plasmas is challenging due to computational time constrains related to resolving both the electron Debye length in space and the inverse of a fraction of the plasma frequency in time. One recent publication [Ricketson and Cerfon, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 59, 024002 (2017)] has demonstrated the interest of using a sparse grid combination technique to accelerate the explicit PIC model. Simplest plasma conditions were considered. This paper is the demonstration of the capability and the effectiveness of the sparse grid combination technique embedded in the PIC algorithm (hereafter called "sparse PIC") to self-consistently model capacitively coupled radio frequency discharges. For two-dimensional calculations, the sparse PIC approach is shown to accurately reproduce the plasma profiles and the energy distribution functions compared to the standard PIC model. The plasma parameters obtained by these two numerical methods differ by less than 5%, while a speed up in the executable time between 2 and 5 is obtained depending on the setup.