PIC Simulation of Plasmas

Dusty plasma simulation

This is a project that we have undertaken to study the fundamentals of complex (dusty) plasmas. We have demonstrated the effect of dust-charge fluctuation on ion-acoustic wave through PIC simulation, which is done for the first time through PIC simulation.

Our simulation could effectively demsontarte the damping of the ion-acoustic wave induced by dust-charge fluctuation, besides also demsontsrtaing the existence of Landau damping.

S Changmai and MP Bora, Scientific Reports 10, 20980 (2020)

Photoemission induced ETSI

Plasma-wall interaction is a very active area of research because of its importance in laboratory and space plasmas. When energetic photons hit a boundary, it causes photoemission to occur, which in turn can drive certain phenomena in the near-wall plasmas or plasma sheaths.

We have demonstrated in this work that under such a situation, the photoemission can drive electron two stream instability (ETSI) in the plasma which surrounds the wall. What is remarkable in this case is that the ETSI so developed will never thermalise and retain its nonlinear phase for the entire life of the plasma. This also makes the electron velocity distribution non-Maxwellian.

Non-Maxwellian velocity distribution in space plasmas is a long-debated research when the plasma can never gets to a situation of full relaxation. We have demonstarted this for a first time in plasma sheath with photoemission.

S Changmai and MP Bora, Phys Plasmas Physics of Plasmas 26, 042113 (2019)