A 1D cylindrical kinetic wave code for helicon plasma sources (Q696756)

The authors develop one-dimensional kinetic code UFEM for the treatment of cylindrical radiowaves in low-temperature plasma. This code includes collision dissipation effects and electron dynamics. The paper introduces the dielectric tensor of plasma, and the following wave types are used in the work: kinetic Alfvén waves, surface quasi-electrostatic waves, and helicon waves (lower hybrid resonance waves, Trivelpiece-Gould waves). The authors give theoretical foundations of the numerical method which is based on a hybrid finite difference discretization of Maxwell equations. The resulting hybrid finite element discretization uses different basis functions for different field components. In this method, the antenna can have arbitrary shape and location. The problems of numerical convergence of solutions and energy fluxes are briefly discussed. The authors also examine numerical spectral pollutions connected with production of unphysical modes. At the end of the paper, the comparison of the code UFEM with the codel ISMENE 5 is done for four different waves. In appendix A the authors show how four different geometries (infinite cylinder, infinite cylinder with equalized end, finite-length cylinder, and half-finite cylinder) can be treated by the same numerical algorithm. In appendix B, the structure of the code UFEM is presented.