Application of the particle-in-cell method for numerical simulation of sheath plasma

We give a survey of papers on the numerical simulation of the sheath plasma using the particle-in-cell method. We study the problem of the behavior of a plasma bounded in the longitudinal direction of an absorbing wall. The model studied contains charged particles (electrons and ions) that move subject to a self-consistent electrostatic field. New pairs of particles are generated in the region of a distributed source. As a numerical model we use the electrostatic "particle-in-cell" method supplemented with the Emmert model for a bulk source and the algorithm of binary Coulomb collisions using a Monte Carlo method. Only electron-ion collisions are taken into account. ©1998 Plenum Publishing Corporation.