Speaker
Description
Low-temperature plasmas are characterized by a strong non-equilibrium nature which can be used to favour certain chemical processes thus making these plasmas suitable for a wide range of applications in materials processing, plasma medicine, biology and agriculture, among others. In these systems, the dominant energy transfer mechanisms are collisions between electrons and neutrals. However, for higher ionization degrees ($\sim 10^{-5}-10^{-3}$), electron-electron collisions are more frequent and can become more relevant in describing the electron kinetics of the plasma.
In this work, we aim to study the effects of electron-electron collisions in low-temperature plasmas using simulations based on a Monte Carlo approach. This corresponds to solving the electron Boltzmann equation stochastically instead of solving it directly. This study is made more difficult due to the long-range nature of this type of collisions which makes them fundamentally different from electron-neutral collisions. Moreover, the Null Collision Method that is frequently used in Monte Carlo codes becomes very inefficient when considering electron-electron collisions. These are some of the issues that this work will aim to address namely through the development of a more efficient null collision method.
Additionally, the effects of electron-electron collisions will also be studied in different physical systems of interest such as atomic and molecular gases as well as considering different electric and magnetic field configurations.
The preliminary results already obtained illustrate the tendency of electron-electron collisions to push the electrons towards thermalization and can provide insight into the possible effects of anisotropic scattering.
