Effective-viscosity approach for nonlocal electron kinetics in inductively coupled plasmas

Phys Rev Lett. 2008 Jan 18;100(2):025001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.100.025001. Epub 2008 Jan 15.

Abstract

In inductively coupled plasmas, nonlocal electron kinetics lead to the anomalous skin effect. We show that this can be approximately described through a fluid equation for electron momentum including a viscosity term with an effective-viscosity coefficient. The solution of this momentum equation coupled with the Maxwell equations is in good agreement with results from a particle-in-cell simulation over a wide range of conditions, reproducing the nonmonotonic structure of the anomalous skin with sometimes local negative power absorption.