Advancing Numerical Plasma Modeling for Next-Generation Ion Sources

Jasmin is a Ph.D. student in Physics at the University of Victoria, specializing in numerical plasma physics and kinetic/fluid modeling for ion sources. 

His project focuses on modernizing and modularizing the 3D explicit Particle-in-Cell code LePIC (CNRS), transforming it into a flexible object-oriented platform for simulating complex plasma processes in ion sources. Key developments include implementing Coulomb collisions for electron thermalization and energy-conserving explicit PIC schemes to improve execution time. Further work targets thermionic electron emission from filaments and electromagnetic approximations for RF-coil power coupling to enable realistic modeling of RF-driven discharges.

The upgraded code will be benchmarked against experimental data from the D-Pace RF ion-source test stand using Langmuir probes. These comparisons between simulation and experiment aim to improve understanding of plasma behavior in extraction systems and guide optimization of next-generation ion-source designs.