Surface roughness effects on plasma near a divertor plate and local impact angle

Abstract

The impact of rough surface topography on the electric potential and electric field is generally neglected due to the small scale of surface roughness compared to the width of the plasma sheath. However, the distributions of the electric potential and field on rough surfaces are expected to influence the characteristics of edge plasma and the local impact angle. The distributions of plasma sheath and local impact angle on rough surfaces are investigated by a two dimension-in-space and three dimension-in-velocity (2d3v) Particle-In-Cell (PIC) code. The influences of the plasma temperature andsurface morphology on the plasma sheath, local impact angle and resulting physical sputtering yield on rough surfaces are investigated. Keywords: Edge plasma, Surface roughness, Plasma sheath, PACS: 52.40.Hf, 52.55.-s, 52.40.Kh