Simulations of Low-temperature Plasmas with Adaptive Cartesian Mesh

Many problems of gas discharge physics are characterized by the presence of large gradients of plasma parameters in localized domains (streamers, filaments, ionization fronts, etc). For such problems, the ability to dynamically adapt the mesh resolution to local plasma properties can substantially increase the accuracy and efficiency of simulations. This paper describes a new tool for plasma simulation with Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) using octree Cartesian mesh. We demonstrate the benefits of AMR for simulation of streamer development in high-pressure corona discharges, classical low-pressure DC discharges, and micro-plasma devices.