Numerically stable modeling of radio frequency fields in plasma

Abstract

The problem of numerically stable solving of Maxwell’s equations written in terms of electric field in plasma is reviewed. The requirements for providing the numerical stability are discussed. The problems arising from the stiffness of Maxwell’s equations in plasma are analyzed. In this respect a newly proposed weighted residuals scheme with uniform trial functions is compared with numerically stable Galerkin scheme. The numerical stability on two-dimensional mesh is addressed briefly. The specific version of staggered mesh method, which is stable on non-orthogonal mesh, is discussed. Among other approaches a method consisting in discretization of Maxwell’s equations written in other equivalent form and recently proposed local solution method are considered.