Capacitive RF discharges modelled by particle-in-cell Monte Carlo simulation. I: analysis of numerical techniques

Particle-in-cell Monte Carlo simulation has become a very effective tool in exploring processing plasmas and in particular capacitive RF discharges. We describe the conventional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation and its limitations in terms of computational efficiency, review the implicit subcycling methods used to improve computational efficiency for many problems, and analyse conventional and implicit subcycling PIC simulation performances on an RF discharge model. Implementation of the implicit subcycling scheme in our bounded one-dimensional electrostatic code, PDP1, resulted in an order of magnitude reduction in the simulation run time when the accuracy conditions were satisfied.