Density Functional Theory Calculations for the Simulation of Secondary Electron Yield

Suppressing the harmful multipactor effect by, for instance, reducing secondary electron yield (SEY) is crucial in the design of RF space technologies. Therefore, improving fundamental understanding of how structural and electronic features of materials affect the SEY is necessary. In this benchmark work, we use density functional theory calculated properties to simulate, via Monte Carlo method, the SEY of simple metals copper and silver. As in these simulations the dielectric property i.e. the energy and momentum dependent energy loss function plays a major role, we focus our study on the computational procedures necessary to obtain reliable first principles data.