Numerical Modeling of Radio Frequency Fields in Plasma

The problem of numerically solving of time-harmonic Maxwell's equations in plasma is addressed. The boundary problems for two representations of them: in terms of electric field and in terms of potentials are discussed.

The reason for that the discretized Maxwell's equations in terms of electric field could be numerically unstable is explained. The measures to avoid the instabilities are briefly addressed.

The problems arising from the stiffness of Maxwell's equations in plasma are analyzed. In this respect an advantage of recently proposed weighted residuals scheme with uniform trial functions before standard numerically stable Galerkin scheme is emphasized

Among methods of solving the system of linear algebraic equations that is the result of discretization the particular attention is paid to usage of modern iterative schemes.

A tree-dimensional numerical model based on iterative approach for magnetized plasma is presented.