Modeling and Simulation of Technological Plasmas

The science and technology of low-temperature plasmas are diverse and inherently interdisciplinary. Due to their unique properties, the broad industrial and commercial applications of low temperature plasmas have greatly improved our lives, from enabling semiconductor device fabrication to improving health care. The physical parameters governing the behavior of the plasma, as well as the length and time scales, can span many orders of magnitude. As a consequence, low-temperature plasmas are thought of as being "hierarchical", "multiscale", or "hybrid". In this hierarchy, the important and often multiphysical phenomena of the plasma are categorized according to their spatial scale or timescale, and linkages are made between those scales. Models of these plasmas are pursued to not only investigate their fundamental physics but also to provide computational tools to design devices using low temperature plasmas. One of the major challenges of simulating low-temperature plasmas is the development of computer models which efficiently capture the essential physics on the different levels. In this talk three questions are addressed: 1) Why are low-temperature plasmas unique? 2) Which models are capable of addressing their diversity? And, as a topical scientific question, 3) how can electromagnetic models be incorporated into kinetic plasma simulations to meet the goals of scientific accuracy and computational efficiency.