IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 38, NO.

9, SEPTEMBER 2010

2281

Computational Studies of Filamentary Pattern Formation in a High Power Microwave Breakdown Generated Air Plasma
Bhaskar Chaudhury and Jean-Pierre Boeuf
AbstractSimulations of the dynamics of high power microwave breakdown of air at atmospheric pressure and 110 GHz are presented. The model reproduces well the formation and motion of lamentary plasma arrays observed experimentally with fast camera imaging. The numerical model is based on nitedifference time domain solutions of Maxwell equations coupled with a simple uid description of the plasma growth and diffusion. The computational procedure is discussed in details along with numerical experiments, to show the sensitivity of the results to different numerical parameters. Index TermsAir plasma, nite-difference time domain (FDTD), uid model, high power microwave (HPM), microwave breakdown, plasma array, plasma laments, plasma modeling, plasma propagation, streamers.

I. I NTRODUCTION IR breakdown using high power microwave (HPM) source in a large range of pressures and frequencies has been extensively investigated and is relatively well understood theoretically, as well as experimentally [1]. Early studies of air breakdown were focused on the determination of the breakdown eld as a function of several parameters such as pressure, frequency, and pulse duration, but it is only relatively recently that detailed observations of the plasma dynamics during breakdown have been possible with the use of fast-speed cameras for microwave [2][7] or other discharge conditions [8][10]. Microwave breakdown at high frequency (around 100 GHz) has been investigated experimentally very recently by Hidaka et al. [2][4], thanks to the development of Gyrotrons capable of producing high power pulses of long duration [11], [12]. The experiments of Hidaka et al. show very clearly the formation of regular lamentary plasma arrays propagating toward the microwave source. Note that the existence of small-scale structures and laments in high pressure microwave breakdown has been known for a long time (see, e.g., [13] and references

Manuscript received December 1, 2009; revised April 21, 2010; accepted June 18, 2010. Date of publication July 26, 2010; date of current version September 10, 2010. B. Chaudhury is with the UPS, INPT, Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion dEnergie (LAPLACE), Universite de Toulouse, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France (e-mail: bhaskar.chaudhury@gmail.com). J. P. Boeuf is with the UPS, INPT, Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion dEnergie (LAPLACE), CNRS and Universite de Toulouse, 31062 Toulouse Cedex 9, France (e-mail: jpb@laplace.univ-tlse.fr). Color versions of one or more of the gures in this paper are available online at http://ieeexplore.ieee.org. Digital Object Identier 10.1109/TPS.2010.2055893

therein), but the detailed dynamics of the self-organized structures has been studied only recently. Self-organization in nonequilibrium discharges takes place in a variety of conditions (for example, in dielectric barrier discharges, [14], [15]) and several interesting papers showing plasma laments and streamers in different conditions can be found in a special issue of this journal (Fifth Triennial Special Issue on Images in Plasma Science, Vol 36, Number 4, 2008). The experimental conditions of [2] (high power microwave breakdown in the millimeter range at atmospheric pressure) offer a new and spectacular example of self-organized dynamic structure in a nonequilibrium plasma. The experiments of [2] [4] show that this unique lamentary plasma structure exists only at high pressures and that the structure changes, with decreasing pressure, into layers of curved plasma sheets and into a more familiar diffuse plasma. Images of the array captured in the E-plane of the incident electromagnetic wave show the multiple plasma columns elongated along the electric eld polarization. Images in the B-plane of the incident wave reveal that these laments are regularly arranged and form a pattern that moves toward the microwave source. The average axial distance between adjacent laments on the beam axis is about 0.76 mm, which is slightly larger than a quarter wavelength (/4 = 0.68 mm) at 110 GHz. Similar discrete structures have been observed at lower microwave frequencies and lower power; however, very few theoretical and modeling attempts have been made to understand these phenomena [16][18]. The complex coupling between the wave and the plasma cannot be described analytically and numerical simulations that can cope with a continuously changing plasma with sharp density gradients must be developed. Recently, a one-dimensional (1-D) model [18] has been proposed to investigate the experimental observations of [2]. The pattern description, however, needs at least a twodimensional (2-D) approach. We have performed such study [19], coupling Maxwell equations with plasma uid equations, to describe the formation of patterns under conditions similar to the experiments [2]. In this paper, the same physical model as in [19] is used and we focus on some numerical aspects of the model. In [19], we showed how two 2-D simulations performed for a transverse electric and transverse magnetic wave can reproduce the experimental three-dimensional patterns observed in two different planes. In this paper, we focus on the case where the incident electric eld is perpendicular to the simulation domain,

0093-3813/$26.00 2010 IEEE

2282

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 38, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2010

which corresponds to the experimental images of [2] taken in the B-plane. We specically study and discuss the parameters that control the numerical accuracy of the simulation keeping the physics as simple as possible. II. P RINCIPLES OF THE F ILAMENTARY A RRAY F ORMATION Hidaka et al. [2] hypothesized the observed development of lamentary arrays as a result of sequential process of electromagnetic (EM) wave diffraction and reection from the initial laments formed early in the breakdown process. This hypothesis was veried to some extent by using a simulation tool with metal posts in place of high density plasma laments [2] and later by a 1-D model involving uid and wave equations [18]. The basic physics of the phenomena observed in [2][4] can be summarized as follows. If the breakdown criterion is satised (i.e., if ionization overcomes attachment, diffusion, and recombination, [1]), the plasmoid initiated by avalanches from a free electron grows until the plasma angular frequency of the plasmoid (p = (ne e2 / 0 me )1/2 ) reaches a value close to the incident wave angular frequency. Because of eld enhancement at its poles [13], [20], the plasmoid stretches in the direction of the electric eld and forms a lament. The plasma starts shielding the incident microwave and reection of the EM wave comes into play, leading to the formation of maxima of the total eld (incident + scattered) ahead of the initial lament, in the direction of the microwave source. Diffusion and enhanced electron multiplication at these maxima lead to the formation of new laments ahead of the previous ones, which in turn modify the eld pattern. The lamentary array therefore propagates toward the source. The stretching of the laments in the direction of the E eld has some similarities with the formation and propagation of streamers and the laments that form during microwave breakdown are sometimes called microwave streamers [13], [20]. The streamer mechanism was initially proposed by Raether, and later by Loeb and Meek [21], to explain the electrical breakdown at near atmospheric pressure under a dc eld. A considerable amount of theoretical, numerical, and experimental work has been performed to understand the development of an electron avalanche, its transition into streamers and the propagation of streamer fronts under a dc eld (on numerical simulations of streamers, see, e.g., [22] and references therein). The development of microwave streamers has not been so extensively described. In this paper, we focus on the experiments of Hidaka et al. [2], and we limit our investigations to the 2-D simulations of the pattern formation in a plane perpendicular to the E eld of the incident wave. The microwave laments or streamers are therefore developing in the direction perpendicular to the simulation domain. We only show calculation results in the context of an incident electric eld perpendicular to the simulation domain which corresponds to the experimental images in the B-plane. We will therefore not describe the elongation of the laments along the E eld (experimental images in the E-plane), when the electric eld is parallel to the simulation domain.

III. P HYSICAL AND C OMPUTATIONAL M ODEL Maxwell equations are coupled with the air plasma transport equations through the electron current density E = 0 H = 0 H t (1) (2) (3)

E +J t

J = ene ve .

Here, E and H represent the electric and magnetic eld of the EM wave; the details of the incident wave are given in Section IV. J is the plasma current density induced by the incident waves. ne is the electron density, e represents the electron charge, ve is the electron mean velocity, 0 and 0 represent the magnetic permeability and electric permittivity of vacuum, respectively. The ion contribution to the current density is neglected. A usual approximation to the mean electron velocity in the current density equation is obtained from the simplied electron momentum transfer equation eE ve = m ve t me (4)

where me represents the electron mass and the electron-neutral collision frequency in air m is estimated by [1] m (s1 ) = 5.3 109 p (5)

where p is the pressure in torr (ambient temperature). In this case, p = 760 Torr. We choose to describe the time evolution of the plasma density by a simple uid equation accounting for plasma diffusion and growth or decay associated with ionization, attachment, and recombination. ne div (Def f ne ) = S t where Def f = (De + Da )/( + 1) (7) (6)

with = i m , is an effective diffusion coefcient; the details of which are discussed in [19]. i is the ionization frequency and m = 0 /[ene (e + i )] is the dielectric or Maxwell relaxation time, (e , i ) represents the electron and ion mobility respectively, and (De , Da ) are free and ambipolar diffusion coefcients. Comparison between numerical solutions of the drift-diffusion Poisson system for a given ionization frequency, with solutions of continuity equation (6) with effective diffusive coefcient, shows excellent agreement and will be presented in a forthcoming paper. S = ne (i a ) rei n2 e (8)

is the net electron production rate and includes ionization (ionization frequency i ), attachment (attachment frequency a ),

CHAUDHURY AND BOEUF: COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF FILAMENTARY PATTERN FORMATION IN A HIGH POWER MICROWAVE

2283

and recombination (recombination coefcient rei , assuming ne = ni ). We have assumed the classical effective eld approximation where the electron transport properties are supposed to depend only on the local effective eld Eef f =
2 Erms 2 ) (1 + 2 /m

lengths, which determine the grid spacing for the solutions of the two sets of equations. In the next two subsections, we describe the numerical procedure for the solution of these equations on two different grids with different time steps. A. Maxwells Equation Using FDTD

(9)

where Erms is the total rms eld at the considered location and is the angular frequency of the incident eld. The dependence of the ionization and attachment frequency in air on Eef f /p is deduced from solutions of the Boltzmann equation [23] under a uniform dc reduced electric eld equal to Eef f /p. The effective diffusion coefcient is equal to the ambipolar 1 and diffusion coefcient in the plasma bulk where i m to the free electron diffusion coefcient on the edge of the plasma (plasma front) where the electron density goes to zero 1. We nd that describing properly the transition and i m from ambipolar diffusion in the plasma to free diffusion at the plasma edge is essential since the propagation velocity of the lamentary pattern only depends on the diffusion coefcient and ionization frequency in the plasma front (see Section III-A below). The continuity equation with effective diffusion equation above allows to use the simplifying assumption of a quasineutral plasma bulk while ensuring a correct description of the plasma edge propagation velocity (having to solve electron and ion transport equations coupled with Poissons equation in this context would lead to a much more complicated and more time consuming numerical method). The use of the effective diffusion coefcient above is discussed and justied in [19]. Note that the 1-D model of [18] assumed that diffusion was purely ambipolar (in the plasma front as well as in the plasma bulk) and we think that this assumption led to erroneous results. The electron mobility is obtained from the electron-neutral momentum collision frequency by e = e/(me m ), the electron diffusion coefcient is given by De = e kTe /e and the ambipolar diffusion coefcient by Da = (i /e )De , with e /i = 100. The electron-ion recombination coefcient is supposed to be constant and equal to rei = 0 in this case. Solution of the electron Boltzmann equation and experiments shows that the electron temperature Te in air varies between 1 and 2 eV for the range of electric elds considered here. In this paper, we have taken Te = 2 eV, which corresponds to an electric eld of 6 MV/m. The accuracy of the model can certainly be improved by taking into account the electron temperature dependence with the rms eld and by including a more detailed description of the plasma chemistry. However, this is beyond the scope of this paper. We have shown in [19] that this simple model can well reproduce some experimental observations, and our goal here is only to focus on some numerical aspects of the model. The characteristic timescale for plasma evolution is much longer than that of the wave considered here (110 GHz) and it is therefore not necessary to solve the Maxwell and uid equations with the same time steps. The same applies to scale

Finite-difference time domain (FDTD) is an explicit secondorder accurate time-domain method using centered nite differences on a uniform Cartesian grid, yielding the spatio-temporal variation of the electric and magnetic elds, and has been applied to a wide variety of applications of electromagnetic scattering problems [24][26]. The discrete E and H are staggered in both time and space which means they are shifted by a half time and space step. The velocity equation is discretized by the direct integration scheme [27]. A scattered-eld FDTD formulation has been used. Contrary to the total-eld FDTD codes [25], which propagate the incident wave through the grid, scattered-eld codes [26] accurately generate the incident wave via an exact analytical function at each eld vector location. In this way, we can get rid of the progressive accumulating errors of the incident wave due to numerical dispersion and anisotropy. The electric and magnetic eld update equations are obtained by decomposing the eld components into incident and scattered terms so that the total elds are Et = Ei + Es and Ht = Hi + Hs , where subscripts i, s, and t stand for incident, scattered, and total elds, respectively. Using a direct integration approximation for electron momentum equation (4), we can write
n+1 n+1 n n n e Et ve ve v n+1 + ve + Et + m e = t 2 me 2

(10)

and using this with leapfrog approximations of (2), we get

n+1 n Es = Es

ene t 1 + n 1 + v 1+ 20 1 + e (11) (12) m t . 2 (13)

t n+1 n + Ei + Ei H 1+ (1 + )0 et n+1 n Et + Et 2me =

2 p t2 , 4

n+1 n ve = ve

1a , 1+a

= 1 + a,

a=

Here, the temporal index n denote the time t = nt. These equations for electric eld and velocity, along with the conventional equation for the magnetic eld are stepped in time, alternately updating the electric and magnetic eld components at each grid point. For our 2-D simulation, the system of Maxwell equations can be solved for an electric eld E perpendicular to the simulation domain, z-polarized x-directed (say TE case, the only nonzero components of the EM elds are Ez , Hx , and Hy ) or in the simulation domain, y-polarized x-directed (say TM case, Ex , Ey , and Hz are nonzero). The 2-D grids for the two cases are

2284

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 38, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2010

steady state eld (constant ionization frequency). In that case, the density can be written as ne (r, t) = At3/2 exp[i t r2 /4Def f t]. (15)

Fig. 1. 2-D FDTD grid showing the location of electric and magnetic elds. Densities are located at the corners whereas velocities and current densities are computed at the locations of E. Density, velocity, and electric eld are dened at the same locations in the TE case. (a) TM. (b) TE.

illustrated in Fig. 1. The spatial grid indices (i, j) correspond to the physical coordinates (ix, jy ). The grid conguration for the current density J is to place Jx , Jy , and Jz at the locations of Ex , Ey , and Ez , respectively. Hence, the velocities are calculated at the locations of electric elds. The densities, on the other hand, are considered at the corners of the cells. When electric eld E is in the simulation domain, we need to do a spatial averaging to estimate the density at the same location as the electric eld, while density, velocity, and electric eld Ez are dened at the same location in the other case when E is perpendicular to the simulation domain. We use the same grid spacing, noted sM in the x- and y -directions, and the time step of the FDTD scheme is tM = 0.5sM /c, where c is the velocity of light. Since we are using a scattered eld formulation, only scattered elds need to be absorbed at the boundaries of the simulation domain, and these can be more easily absorbed than a total eld by an outer radiation boundary condition. We are using Murs boundary condition [28] for the absorption of the waves at the computational boundaries. B. Solution of the Continuity Equation The continuity equation (6) is solved using a simple explicit scheme for the diffusion and ionization term, whereas the loss terms are treated implicitly or semi-implicitly to impose positivity of the solution
+1 nn e(k,l) =

1 1 + tF (a + rei nn (k,l) ) nn e(k,l) [1 + tF i ] + Def f tF s2 F

n n nn e(k+1,l) + ne(k1,l) + ne(k,l+1) n +nn e(k,l1) 4ne(k,l)

The density equation (15) exhibits a front that propagates at a speed v = 2(Def f i )1/2 , where the value of Def f has to be taken at the front (i.e., Def f = De ), and the characteristic length of the front, dened as |ne /ne |1 in a reference frame moving at speed v , is L = (Def f /i )1/2 . We see that the characteristic length of the front decreases when the ionization frequency increases, i.e., when the applied electric eld increases. In our conditions, Def f is on the order of 103 m2 /s in the front and i may be on the order of a few 109 s1 , so that L is in the micrometer range, i.e., very small with respect to the wave length (2.7 mm). An efcient way to deal with the requirement of a ne grid to accurately describe the sharp density gradients would be to use an adaptive mesh renement (AMR) scheme which adapts the distribution of grids according to the density gradients. For the cases considered here (simulations of the conditions of the experiments of [2]), we found that using a xed grid ne enough to resolve the density gradients led to reasonable computation times. It also appeared that accurate results could be obtained using a FDTD grid much coarser than the density grid (see Section IV). In the following, we use the same grid spacing in the x- and y -directions, and we call sM the grid spacing for the Maxwell equations (FDTD scheme) and sF the grid spacing for the uid equation for the density. The grid size ratio m is dened by m = sM /sF . Solutions of the continuity equation needs the transport coefcients which are functions of the electric eld. Since the electric eld is available only at the coarser FDTD grid points, an interpolation is needed to obtain the effective eld on the ne grid in order to estimate the ionization and attachment frequencies in the density equation. Once the new density is known on the ne grid, proper interpolation must be used to update the density on the coarser grid, which is used in the FDTD scheme. We have employed a simple 2-D linear interpolation scheme for this purpose, which is briey described below. The large dots in Fig. 2, A, B, C and D, are coarse grid points where rms electric elds are available after solving the Maxwell equations. Proper averaging must be done for the TM case to get the rms value of the E eld at the corners of the coarse cells, where the density is dened. Finally, rms values at all the ne mesh locations represented by the small circles are interpolated using the formula ek,l = (m nl ) (m nk ) (m nl ) nk Ei,j + Ei+1,j m m m m nl (m nk ) nl nk Ei,j +1 + Ei+1,j +1 + m m mm

(14)

(16)

In this problem of microwave breakdown at high pressure, the density gradients can be very large, and we will see in Section IV below, that the grid spacing for the density equation (6) must be, in some cases, much smaller than the FDTD grid for the Maxwell equations. The density gradient can be estimated by considering the asymptotic solution of equation (6), assuming only ionization and in the case of a uniform and

where nk , nl varies from 0, 1, 2, . . . , m in the x- and y -directions, respectively. For example, in Fig. 2, m = 5, and we have 36 points in the ne grid. Using the interpolated values of the eld, the new density at the ne grid locations is obtained from the discretized continuity equation (14). The density on the coarse grid is then obtained

CHAUDHURY AND BOEUF: COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF FILAMENTARY PATTERN FORMATION IN A HIGH POWER MICROWAVE

2285

Fig. 2. Overlapping coarse FDTD and ne uid grid. Interpolation is used to nd the electric elds at the ne mesh points.

Fig. 3. Evolution of plasma laments with time. Plasma densities at (a) 15 ns, (b) 50 ns, (c) 75 ns, and (d) 143 ns. Distances are in terms of and densities are measured in m3 .

by a proper weighting (similar to the one used for interpolation above) of the density of the ne grid. The time step (tF ) for the continuity equation is calculated using the CFL condition tF < (sF )2 /(2Dmax ), where sF is the uid mesh size and Dmax corresponds to maximum effective diffusion.

C. Algorithm Maxwell equations and the density equation are solved successively in time (this is possible because the time scale of the density variations is much longer than that of the 110-GHz EM eld). Using the density calculated at time t, Maxwell equations, together with the electron momentum equation [eqs. (1)(4)], are solved with the FDTD scheme (eqs. (11), (12)) for one cycle of the EM wave, TM . The rms eld is then calculated on the coarse grid and interpolated on the ne grid, and the density equation is solved (using the same rms eld) for a time duration equal to TM (it is possible, under some conditions and in order to save computation time, to solve the density over a time duration equal to several TM ; this will not be discussed here). Once the density at time t + TM has been calculated on the ne grid, the density is updated on the coarse gird, and the Maxwell equations are solved over the next cycle using the updated density.

IV. R ESULTS AND D ISCUSSION In this section, we show the 2-D simulation results for breakdown in air at a pressure of 760 torr with 110 GHz, 6 MV/m EM eld for the case of E eld perpendicular to the simulation domain. The simulation domain is 3 3. Breakdown is initiated around an initial charged particle density prole of 1013 m3 with a Gaussian shape and a standard deviation of 50 m, centered on the central x-axis at a distance of 2.25 from the left boundary (x = 0). The incident plane wave (of the form E0 cos(t kx)) is injected at x = 0 with a wave vector in the x-direction.

Fig. 3 shows the plasma density distribution at four different times of the simulation for a 6 MV/m 110-GHz incident eld. We see that breakdown takes place at the initial location of the seed electrons. Once the density of the plasmoid is sufcient, the incident eld is scattered and standing waves with electric eld maxima appear ahead of the plasmoid, as described in Section II. The plasmoids are actually laments that stretch along the E eld, i.e., in the direction perpendicular to the simulation domain. New laments grow due to diffusion and enhanced ionization at the eld maxima ahead from the previous laments. The lamentary pattern propagates in the direction of the microwave source and at a velocity controlled by ionization and diffusion coefcient on the plasma edge. The density distributions of Fig. 3 show that the distance between the on-axis laments are of the order of /4, which matches the experimental results. We have seen above that in order to resolve properly the density gradients, the grid spacing for the density equation may be quite small. In order to minimize the computation time, it is important to optimize the sizes of the computational grids and the purpose of the discussion below is to study the inuence of the grid spacing for the FDTD (coarse grid) and density (ne grid) on the accuracy of the results. In Fig. 3, the coarse grid size was /50, while the ne grid size was /1200. In all the gures below, the distances are in terms of incident wave wavelength . Generally, the cell size (sM ) for the FDTD grid is determined by the restrictive dispersion requirements, which require it to be smaller than roughly 1/10 or 1/20 of the incident wavelength or smallest electromagnetic feature of interest. In this case, the important length scale which must be properly resolved is the minimum skin depth which determines the penetration of the EM eld in the plasma. For an incident wave of 6 MV/m, the electron density reaches values on the order of 4 1021 m3 , corresponding to a skin depth on the order of 3 104 m, i.e., about /10. As a rst test (see Table I), calculations with four different FDTD grid sizes (25, 50, 75, and 100 grid spacings per wavelength) less than this skin depth have been performed, the density grid size being kept constant. We have compared

2286

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 38, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2010

TABLE I NUMERICAL PARAMETERS USEDFOR DIFFERENT CASES ALONG WITH THE A PPROXIMATE P ROPAGATION T IME OFTHE F ILAMENTS

Fig. 5. Position of the front (edge of the 1st lament on the left in Fig. 4) as a function of time for different FDTD grid and with a constant grid size (/1000) for the density equation, in the cases shown in 4.

Fig. 4. Filamentary pattern after the front propagates one from its starting point toward the source, for a constant size of the density grid (/1000) and different FDTD grid sizes (a)/25, (b)/50, (c)/75, and (d)/100. The beam enters from x = 0, and electric eld is perpendicular to the plane of paper. Densities (ne ) are in m3 .

the shape and time of propagation of the laments toward the source, until the pattern travels a distance of one wavelength from the initial breakdown point. Note that the time of propagation over one wavelength may be slightly different for different grid sizes (last column of Table I) and converges toward 102 ns. Fig. 4 shows the pattern obtained in the four different cases after propagation over one wavelength and Fig. 5 shows the time evolution of the location of the plasma front. The little mismatch in Fig. 5 is due to front detection procedure, accuracy of which depends on the FDTD grid size. The front position is determined by following a particular density level on the axis of symmetry. In this case, the level is taken as 104 times the maximum density in the laments (typically, in the order of 1017 m3 ). It should be noted that the speed of propagation is not constant and the observed decrease in speed is associated with the formation of new laments. Newly formed laments take some time to attain a signicant density level before it starts reecting the incident wave and propagates forward. This delay leads to the change in speed. The results of Figs. 4 and 5 show that the speed, as well as the structure of the laments, are insensitive to the FDTD grid size if it is less than /25, which is good enough to resolve the associated skin depth. However, higher electric elds lead to higher densities and hence a lower

Fig. 6. Filamentary pattern after the front propagates over one wavelength, from its starting point, with a constant FDTD grid size (/50) and for different grid sizes of discretized density equation (a)/100, (b)/300, (c)/500, (d)/1200. The beam enters from x = 0, and electric eld is perpendicular to the plane of paper. Densities (ne ) are in m3

skin depth, therefore the grid sizes must be adjusted with it. The speed of propagation can be easily found from the slope of Fig. 5 and it is of the order of 30 km/s. We have performed a parametric study to nd the speed of propagation as a function of incident power, as well as at different pressures with constant power. We get similar trends as reported in the experiment [4], and for an incident power of 3 Mw/cm2 ( 4.75 MV/m), we obtain a similar speed of 14 km/s, which is in good quantitative agreement with the experimental results of [4]. A second set of tests has been performed for different sizes of the uid grid using a constant FDTD grid size equal to /50. As shown in Table I, the ratio between the Maxwell grid size and the density grid size has been varied as 2, 6, 10, 20, 24, corresponding to density grid sizes from /100 to /1200. Figs. 6 and 7 show that the results are very sensitive to the density grid size. Grids coarser than /500 (i.e., about 5.4 m) give unacceptable errors for both speed of propagation and density distribution. The results start improving with decreasing grid sizes, below /500. This conrms that the grid spacing of the density equation must resolve the characteristic length

CHAUDHURY AND BOEUF: COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF FILAMENTARY PATTERN FORMATION IN A HIGH POWER MICROWAVE

2287

Fig. 7. Position of the front as a function of time for different grid sizes of the discretized density equation and with a constant FDTD grid size /50.

of the front, dened (see the discussion in Section III-B) as (De /i )1/2 ). Fig. 6 clearly shows the effect of numerical diffusion for density grids coarser than /500. Grid sizes smaller than this length scale can reproduce the experimental results quite well; however, the simulation becomes computationally expensive. It must be noted that the ionization rate of air scales approximately as the electric eld strength to the fth power [4], which means that larger incident electric elds will require even ner grids. Adaptative renement schemes based on the diffusion/ionization scale length criteria for the density grid can lead to much less computational demands which will be particularly useful for a 3-D study. Limitation: The computational scheme described here, based on the use of a ne grid for the plasma equation and a coarse grid for Maxwell equations, works perfectly when the electric eld E is perpendicular to the simulation domain. However, it is less accurate when the electric eld is in the simulation plane because the simple eld interpolation between the coarse grid and the ne grid that we have used in this paper is no longer adequate. Solutions of the problem with the E-eld in the simulation domain and with a dual mesh have been compared with exact solutions obtained with a unique ne mesh (using a parallelized code). The comparisons show that using a dual mesh in that case still provides a good propagation velocity of the laments, but that the detailed structure of the laments may not be accurately described. V. C ONCLUSION The formation of plasma patterns during microwave breakdown in atmospheric air at 110 GHz has been simulated using an FDTD method coupled with a diffusion-ionization description of the plasma growth. The results show a good qualitative agreement with the experiments and good quantitative match is obtained for the propagation speed of the laments. The computational procedure and the convergence of the simulations have been studied as a function of grid size. The results show that two different grid sizes can be used for the Maxwell and density equations. A sufcient accuracy is obtained when the FDTD grid size is on the order or less than the plasma skin

depth, i.e., 25 grid spacing per wavelength (about 100 m) can be used for air breakdown at 6 MV/m, 110 GHz, while a grid spacing in the m range (more than 1000 grid spacing per wavelength) is necessary to resolve the sharp density front. This combination leads to reasonable computation times, of about 12 CPU hours on a PC workstation to follow the propagation of the lamentary plasma pattern for 100 ns in a 3 3 simulation domain for the maximum accuracy of Table I. We can conclude that 3-D simulations are feasible under these conditions for a xed FDTD grid, but an adaptative mesh renement method for the density equation would be probably necessary. In this paper, we have considered, as in [19], a very simplied physical model (constant electron temperature, no plasma chemistry, etc.) of the dynamics of microwave breakdown. The results show [19] that this model is sufcient to reproduce some important experimental features, provided that an effective diffusion coefcient is taken into account. Also, the purpose of this paper was to focus on some numerical aspects of the model, and it was therefore not necessary to add any complexity to the model of [19]. A more detailed analysis of the effects of the assumptions of the discharge model (eld dependence of the electron temperature, recombination coefcients, role of negative ions . . .) will be presented in forthcoming papers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT This work has been performed in the frame of the RTRA STAE PLASMAX project. The authors would like to thank members of this project for fruitful discussions. R EFERENCES
[1] A. D. MacDonald, Microwave Breakdown in Gases. New York: Wiley, 1966. [2] Y. Hidaka, E. M. Choi, I. Mastovsky, M. A. Shapiro, J. R. Sirigiri, and R. J. Temkin, Observation of large arrays of plasma laments in air breakdown by 1.5-MW 110-GHz gyrotron pulses, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 100, no. 3, p. 035003, Jan. 2008. [3] Y. Hidaka, E. M. Choi, I. Mastovsky, M. A. Shapiro, J. R. Sirigiri, and R. J. Temkin, Imaging of atmospheric air breakdown caused by a high-power 110-GHz pulsed Gaussian beam, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 936937, Aug. 2008. [4] Y. Hidaka, E. M. Choi, I. Mastovsky, M. A. Shapiro, J. R. Sirigiri, R. J. Temkin, G. F. Edmiston, A. A. Neuber, and Y. Oda, Plasma structures observed in gas breakdown using a 1.5 MW, 110 GHz pulsed gyrotron, Phys. Plasmas, vol. 16, no. 5, p. 055702, May 2009. [5] G. C. Herring and S. Popovic, Microwave air breakdown enhanced with metallic initiators, Appl. Phys. Lett., vol. 92, no. 13, p. 131501, Mar. 2008. [6] I. I. Esakov, L. P. Grachev, K. V. Khodataev, V. L. Bychkov, and D. M. Van Wie, Surface discharge in a microwave beam, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 35, no. 6, pp. 16581663, Dec. 2007. [7] R. P. Cardoso, T. Belmonte, C. Noel, F. Kosior, and G. Henrion, Filamentation in argon microwave plasma at atmospheric pressure, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 105, no. 9, p. 093306, May 2009. [8] S. Celestin, K. Allegraud, G. Canes-Boussard, O. Guaitella, N. Leick, and A. Rousseau, Patterns of plasma laments propagating on a dielectric surface, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 13261327, Aug. 2008. [9] P. Tardiveau, N. Moreau, F. Jorand, C. Postel, S. Pasquiers, and P. Vervisch, Nanosecond scale discharge dynamics in high pressure air, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 894895, Aug. 2008. [10] T. M. P. Briels, E. M. van Veldhuizen, and U. Ebert, Positive streamers in ambient air and a N2 : O2 mixture (99.8 : 0.2), IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 36, no. 4, pp. 906907, Aug. 2008.

2288

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PLASMA SCIENCE, VOL. 38, NO. 9, SEPTEMBER 2010

[11] T. Idehara, T. Saito, I. Ogawa, S. Mitsudo, Y. Tatematsu, and S. Sabchevski, The potential of the gyrotrons for development of the sub-terahertz and the terahertz frequency rangeA review of novel and prospective applications, Thin Solid Films, vol. 517, no. 4, pp. 1503 1506, Dec. 2008. [12] J. H. Booske, Plasma physics and related challenges of millimeterwave-to-terahertz and high power microwave generation, Phys. Plasmas, vol. 15, no. 5, p. 055502, May 2008. [13] A. L. Vikharev, A. M. Gorbachev, A. V. Kim, and A. L. Kolysko, Formation of the small-scale structure in a microwave discharge in high-pressure gas, Sov. J. Plasma Phys., vol. 18, no. 8, pp. 554560, 1992. [14] I. Muller, C. Punset, E. Ammelt, H.-G. Purwins, and J. P. Boeuf, Selforganized laments in dielectric barrier glow discharges, IEEE Trans. Plasma Sci., vol. 27, no. 1, pp. 2021, Feb. 1999. [15] L. Stollenwerk, S. Amiranashvili, J.-P. Boeuf, and H.-G. Purwins, Measurement and 3D simulation of self-organized laments in a barrier discharge, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 96, no. 25, p. 255001, Jun. 2006. [16] V. L. Bychkov, L. P. Grachev, and I. I. Isakov, Thermal ionization instability of an air discharge plasma in a microwave eld, Tech. Phys., vol. 52, no. 3, pp. 289295, Mar. 2007. [17] V. A. Bityurin and P. V. Vedenin, Electrodynamic model of a microwave streamer, Tech. Phys. Lett., vol. 35, no. 7, pp. 622625, Jul. 2009. [18] S. K. Nam and J. P. Verboncoeur, Theory of lamentary plasma array formation in microwave breakdown at near-atmospheric pressure, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 103, no. 5, p. 055004, Jul. 2009. [19] J. P. Boeuf, B. Chaudhury, and G. Q. Zhu, Theory and modeling of selforganization and propagation of lamentary plasma arrays in microwave breakdown at atmospheric pressure, Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 104, no. 1, p. 015002, Jan. 2010. [20] L. P. Grachev, I. I. Esakov, and S. G. Malyk, A spherical plasmoid with a diffuse boundary in a linearly polarized quasistatic electromagnetic eld, Tech. Phys., vol. 46, no. 6, pp. 668672, Jun. 2001. [21] L. B. Loeb and J. M. Meek, The mechanism of spark discharge in air at atmospheric pressure, J. Appl. Phys., vol. 11, no. 6, pp. 438447, Jun. 1940. [22] C. Montijn, W. Hundsdorfer, and U. Ebert, An adaptive grid renement strategy for the simulation of negative streamers, J. Comput. Phys., vol. 219, no. 2, pp. 801835, Dec. 2006. [23] G. J. M. Hagelaar and L. C. Pitchford, Solving the Boltzmann equation to obtain electron transport coefcients and rate coefcients for uid models, Plasma Sources Sci. Technol., vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 722733, Nov. 2005. [24] K. S. Yee, Numerical solution of initial boundary value problems involving Maxwells equations in isotropic media, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. AP-14, no. 3, pp. 302307, May 1966. [25] A. Taove and S. C. Hagness, Computational Electrodynamics: The Finite-Difference Time Domain Method. Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2000. [26] K. S. Kunz and R. J. Luebbers, The Finite Difference Time-Domain Method for Electromagnetics. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press, 1993.

[27] S. A. Cummer, An analysis of new and existing FDTD methods for isotropic cold plasma and a method for improving their accuracy, IEEE Trans. Antennas Propag., vol. 45, no. 3, pp. 392400, Mar. 1997. [28] G. Mur, Absorbing boundary conditions for the nite-difference approximation of the time-domain electromagnetic-eld equations, IEEE Trans. Electromagn. Compat., vol. EMC-23, no. 4, pp. 377382, Nov. 1981.

Bhaskar Chaudhury was born at Giridih, Jharkhand, India, in 1978. He received the B.Sc. degree in physics from the Vinoba Bhave University, Hazaribagh, India, in 1999, the M.Sc. degree in applied physics from the Sikkim Manipal Institute of Technology, Gangtok, India, in 2002, and the Ph.D. degree at the Institute for Plasma Research, Gandhinagar, India, in 2008. He is currently working as a Post-Doctoral Researcher at LAPLCAE, Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France. His research interests include computational electromagnetics, computational plasma physics, millimeter/ microwave interaction with plasma, high pressure/atmospheric pressure plasmas and its applications, uid models, streamer dynamics, antenna theory, radar cross section studies, FDTD method, PIC simulations, wave propagation in plasmas, high-performance computing, etc.

Jean Pierre Boeuf received the Master degree from the Ecole Superieure dElectricit in Gif sur Yvette, France, in June 1977. He received the Ph.D. degree in plasma physics from the Universit de Paris XI Orsay, France, in 1981 and is Docteur s Sciences of Universit de Paris XI, in 1985. In 1983, he joined the National Center for Scientic Research (CNRS) at the Laboratoire de Physique des Dcharges, Ecole Suprieure dElectricit, Gif sur Yvette, France. He moved to Universit Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France at Centre de Physique des Plasmas et Applications de Toulouse (CPAT) in 1986. He is currently the Directeur de Recherche CNRS at Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion dEnergie (LAPLACE), a joint laboratory between CNRS, Universit Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France, and Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Toulouse, France. He is currently in charge of the LAPLACE Research Group in Energetic and Non-equilibrium Plasmas (GREPHE). His recent research programs include projects on plasma thrusters for satellite propulsion, plasmas for aerodynamic applications, negative ion source for the ITER neutral beam injection, microwave breakdown, micro-discharges and applications, in collaboration with academic and industrial partners.