Simulating streamer discharges in 3D with the parallel adaptive Afivo framework

TL;DR

This paper introduces an open-source 3D plasma simulation code using adaptive mesh refinement, enabling detailed streamer discharge modeling with high computational efficiency and demonstrating various streamer interaction phenomena.

Contribution

It presents a novel open-source 3D streamer discharge simulation framework based on the Afivo platform with adaptive mesh refinement and parallel computing capabilities.

Findings

Simulations show how background density influences streamer propagation and branching.

Interaction of streamers with preionized regions is effectively modeled.

Two-streamer interactions are successfully simulated, demonstrating the code's capabilities.

Abstract

We present an open-source plasma fluid code for 2D, cylindrical and 3D simulations of streamer discharges, based on the Afivo framework that features adaptive mesh refinement, geometric multigrid methods for Poisson's equation, and OpenMP parallelism. We describe the numerical implementation of a fluid model of the drift-diffusion-reaction type, combined with the local field approximation. Then we demonstrate its functionality with 3D simulations of long positive streamers in nitrogen in undervolted gaps, using three examples. The first example shows how a stochastic background density affects streamer propagation and branching. The second one focuses on the interaction of a streamer with preionized regions, and the third one investigates the interaction between two streamers. The simulations run on up to $10^8$ grid cells within less than a day. Without mesh refinement, they would require $4\cdot 10^{12}$ grid cells.