Self-consistent description of radial space-charge confinement in DC column plasmas
A new method for the self-consistent description of radial space-charge confinement and the corresponding nonlocal kinetics of plasma components in the cylindrical de column plasma is presented. The method comprises the solution of the space-dependent kinetic equation of the electron component, the fluid equations of ions and excited neutral particles and Poisson's equation. The nonlinearly coupled equations are solved self-consistently applying a nonlinear optimization technique, which is used to optimize a polynomial representation of the radial space-charge potential. The applicability of several optimization methods and their suitability concerning the convergence and accuracy are discussed. Examples of the self-consistent description are presented. (C) 2001 Academic Press.
dc column plasma poisson's equation electron kinetics function minimization