Numerical study on wave attenuation via 2D fully kinetic electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations

TL;DR

This study uses 2D fully kinetic electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations to analyze electromagnetic wave attenuation in plasma, revealing how plasma structure and wave frequency influence absorption, with findings consistent with experimental results.

Contribution

It provides a detailed numerical investigation of wave attenuation mechanisms in plasma using 2D PIC simulations, highlighting the impact of plasma arrangement and wave parameters.

Findings

Plasma structure arrangement affects wave attenuation efficiency.

Wave frequency influences the degree of wave absorption.

Simulation results align with recent experimental observations.

Abstract

The propagation and absorption of electromagnetic waves in plasma is one of the fundamental issues in plasma physics. The electromagnetic particle-in-cell method with the finite-difference time-domain solver plus Monte Carlo collision model would be the most accurate method to simulate the wave-plasma interaction. However, the numerical effects of this method have not been carefully investigated especially in two dimensions. In this paper, the 2D PIC method is used to study the electromagnetic wave attenuation by fluorescent lamp plasma tubes. The study finds that the number of macro-particles and the incident electromagnetic wave amplitude have minor effects on the wave attenuation within a certain appropriate parameter range. Furthermore, the effects of electromagnetic wave frequency, the plasma distribution structures, and collision types on wave attenuation are investigated. Particularly, it is found that the staggered way of arranging the plasma distribution structures can achieve better wave attenuation than the parallel way, which agrees with our recent experimental observation.