Numerical study on wave attenuation via 2D electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations

Abstract The propagation and absorption of electromagnetic waves in plasma is one of the fundamental issues in plasma physics. The electromagnetic particle-in-cell method with the finite-difference time-domain solver plus Monte Carlo collision model would be one accurate method to simulate the wave-plasma interaction. However, the numerical effects of this method have not been carefully investigated especially in two dimensions. In this paper, the 2D PIC method is used to study the electromagnetic wave attenuation by fluorescent lamp plasma tubes. 
The study finds that the number of macro-particles and the incident electromagnetic
wave amplitude have minor effects
on the wave attenuation within
a certain appropriate parameter range.
Furthermore, the effects of electromagnetic wave frequency, the plasma distribution structures, and collision types on wave attenuation are investigated. Particularly,
it is found that the staggered way of arranging the plasma distribution structures can achieve better wave attenuation than the parallel way, which agrees with our recent
experimental observation.