Developpment of a hybrid MPI/OpenMP massivelly parallel 3D particle-in-cell model of a magnetized plasma source

A fully self-consistent model of low pressure magnetized plasma sources which includes a complex physical-chemistry as well as a precise description of the particle transport dynamics is currently lacking at present. Ions sources used in heavy ion particle accelerators, high power large volume negative ion sources embedded in the neutral beam injectors of fusion devices and plasma thrusters for instance belong to the category of low pressure, low temperature magnetized plasma sources. Particle-in-cell algorithms are well suited to model these type of plasmas because they intrinsically incorporate kinetic effects (which may be significant at low pressure) and furthermore can be efficiently parallelized to run on supercomputers. We report on the development of 2.5D and 3D massively parallel hybrid MPI/OpenMP Particle-in-Cell models with Monte-Carlo collisions
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. In 2.5D, the simulation domain is 2D and particle losses in the un-simulated dimension are approximated (this approach is adequate when the magnetic field lines are parallel to the un-simulated direction). As an application, we model in 3D the tandem-type one-driver ITER prototype ion source operated at BATMAN (Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP) in Garching, Germany). In tandem-type plasma sources where the plasma is mostly generated inside the Inductively-Coupled-Plasma (ICP) discharge and diffuses into the second chamber which is magnetized, a plasma asymmetry occurs for magnetic field configurations such that the electrons drift toward the walls of the device. This is due to a physical mechanism analogous to the Hall effect in metals and semiconductors. In this work, we will provide a comprehensive description of the plasma transport properties in the ITER prototype source.