Landau damping and anomalous skin effect in low-pressure gas discharges: Self-consistent treatment of collisionless heating

In low-pressure discharges, where the electron mean free path is larger or comparable with the discharge length, the electron dynamics is essentially nonlocal. Moreover, the electron energy distribution function ~EEDF! deviates considerably from a Maxwellian. Therefore, an accurate kinetic description of the low-pressure discharges requires knowledge of the nonlocal conductivity operator and calculation of the non-Maxwellian EEDF. The previous treatments made use of simplifying assumptions: a uniform density profile and a Maxwellian EEDF. In the present study a self-consistent system of equations for the kinetic description of nonlocal, nonuniform, nearly collisionless plasmas of low-pressure discharges is reported. It consists of the nonlocal conductivity operator and the averaged kinetic equation for calculation of the non-Maxwellian EEDF. This system was applied to the calculation of collisionless heating in capacitively and inductively coupled plasmas. In particular, the importance of accounting for the nonuniform plasma density profile for computing the current density profile and the EEDF is demonstrated. The enhancement of collisionless heating due to the bounce resonance between the electron motion in the potential well and the external rf electric field is investigated. It is shown that a nonlinear and self-consistent treatment is necessary for the correct description of collisionless heating. © 2004 American Institute of Physics. @DOI: 10.1063/1.1688792#