Simulation of sheath problems with an accelerated Monte Carlo method*

We simulate the interactions between a plasma and an absorbing wall in a confined volume with an accelerated Monte Carlo method for Coulomb Collisions. We treat ions as particles and the electrons to be continuum. Our method is based on the earlier work developed in the context of rarefied gas dynamics by Pareschi and Caflisch (J. Comp. Phys, 1999) and the Coulomb collision model developed by Nanbu (PRE 1997). The hybrid formulation combines particle and continuum methods and uses a thermalization and dethermalization procedure to accelerate the computation while retaining accuracy of the solution. We investigate sheath formation and compare the simulation results between Nanbu's particle method and the hybrid method.