Developing an Efficient PIC/MC Simulator for RF Plasmas Using Higher Order Sampling

An efficient self-consistent Particle-in-Cell/Monte Carlo (PIC/MC) simulator for rf plasma using higher order sampling technique called Legendre Polynomial Weighted Sampling (LPWS) has been developed in this work. The spatial distributions of charged particles in a discharge space obtained by LPWS show good statistics, as compared with the conventional PIC/MC performed with the same number of super particles. Also, the spatial distribution of electric field in the discharge space calculated from those of the charged particles by solving Poisson’s equation show good statistics, so that instability of simulation caused by the fluctuation of the electric field which readily occurs in a particle model simulation of high density plasma can be inhibited by the developed simulator. Calculation time of the PIC/MC simulator coupled with LPWS is almost the same as that of the conventional PIC/MC simulator. It is found that the results obtained by the developed PIC/MC simulation have a tendency to reach the steady state condition earlier than those by the conventional PIC/MC simulator.