Numerical Simulation of Penning Gas Discharge in 2D/3D Setting

Abstract

Abstract This work presents a numerical simulation of the Penning discharge in 2D/3D formulation. The simulation is based on the electrostatic particle method in cells using structured rectangular grids and implemented in the VSim software package. To simulate the kinetic processes in a gas-discharge plasma, the Monte-Carlo collision method was used. The calculations were carried out for several sets of chemical kinetics reactions, and their comparison is given. Various characteristics of the Penning discharge in 2D and 3D formulation were calculated, such as anodic/cathodic currents, the distribution of charged particles in space and energies, etc. A comparison of the simulation results with experimental data was observed.