GEC Early Career Award: Development of Collision Models and Data Through to Applications in Plasma Modeling

Modeling low-temperature non-equilibrium plasmas involves complex physics and computational algorithms that require the coupling of particle kinetics (including collisional and

radiative processes) and electric and magnetic fields. Over the last decade or so, collisional-radiative (CR), Monte Carlo (MC) particle-in-cell (MCPIC) and Boltzmann solver codes have

become the primary tools of use to model these plasmas. However, these tools rely on input kinetic data and models: cross sections, radiative-data and collision models, which are

particularly difficult to calculate for low-temperature plasmas, where near-neutral atoms and molecules, and excited state species are abundant. As a result, in general, comprehensive sets of kinetic data and models do not exist in the literature. In this talk we review the steps taken to generate kinetic data and analyze their impact in

plasma modeling tools. Specifically, we will review a recently developed frame-work for quickly calculating radiative and electron-impact cross sections that can been applied to near-neutral ground and excited states species for atoms, ions and diatomic molecules (to be applied to polyatomics in the future). We compare these data to fundamental cross section experiments, and utilizing our recently developed MC code “ThunderBoltz” perform swarm-type calculations to validate the data sets.