Fokker-Planck-Boltzmann Model for the Global Electron Velocity Distribution Function Combining Ohmic and Stochastic Heating

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new Fokker-Planck-Boltzmann model that efficiently combines Ohmic and stochastic heating effects to determine the global electron velocity distribution in low-collisionality plasmas.

Contribution

It develops a simplified, integrable operator for non-local electron heating, enabling faster and more consistent kinetic modeling of plasmas with both collisional and collisionless heating.

Findings

The model accurately describes non-local electron heating effects.

It allows fast computation of the electron distribution function.

The approach integrates well with classical Boltzmann solvers.

Abstract

Under low-collisionality conditions the isotropic part of the electron velocity distribution function in a plasma becomes non-local and the electrons can be described by a single global distribution function . This is also the regime required for non-local collisonless (stochastic) heating in oscillating and spatially inhomogeneous electric fields. Solution of the Boltzmann equation under these conditions requires usually computationally involving multi-dimensional PIC/MC simulations. The necessity of multi-dimensional simulation arises mainly from the complicated time and space dependence of the collisionless electron heating process. Here it is shown that a time, volume, und solid angle averaged Fokker-Planck operator for the interaction of electrons with an external field can replace the local Ohmic heating operator resulting from a two-term approximation of the Boltzmann equation. This allows consistent treatment of collisional as well as collisonless heating. This operator combined with the dissipative operators for interaction with neutrals, as resulting from the two-term approximation, plus an additional operator for surface losses provide altogether a kinetic description for the determination of the global static and isotropic distribution function of the system. The new operators are relatively easy to integrate in classical local Boltzmann solvers and allow for a fast calculation of the distribution function. As an example, an operator describing non-local collisionless as well as collisional heating in inductively coupled plasmas (ICPs) is derived. The resulting distribution function can then be used to calculate rates and moments in a fluid model of the plasma, similarly to the common practice in the local and highly collisional case. A certain limitation of the above concept is the necessity of using pre-defined field structures.