PIC/MCC Simulation of the Ionization Process for Filamentary Streamer Plasma Jet at Atmosphere Pressure in Argon

Recently, we have reported a microwave plasma jet at atmosphere in argon, capable of generating filamentary streamer discharges within the entire quartz tube, while several bifurcations yield at the end of the copper wire immediately in the quartz tube when incident power reaches 20 W. However, the ionization process for the discharges is still not very well clarified. This paper shows a numerical study of the proposed plasma jet by means of the 2D3V particle in cell with Monte Carlo collision method. The detailed information about the distributions of plasmas and electromagnetic fields is obtained by sampling the simulated results at different time steps. The simulation results suggest that the production of the proposed plasma jet is attributed to the seed plasmas triggered by the enhanced electric field of surface plasmon polaritons and its interaction with plasmas.