English

Plasma-wall transition and sheath formation

Plasma Physics 2021-10-06 v2

Abstract

A review of the theoretical and computational aspects of plasma-wall transition is presented. The conditions for the existence of plasma sheaths in front of a solid surface are established. Various regimes are analyzed -collisionless and collisional. fluid and kinetic, with and without ionization. The partition of the plasma-wall transition into distinct regions (Debye sheath, quasineutral presheath. magnetic presheath, etc...) is also discussed. Applications to the theory of electrostatic probes are illustrated by means of a recently developed kinetic model. The influence of the probe on ion temperature measurements is studied in detail.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.01889,
  title  = {Plasma-wall transition and sheath formation},
  author = {Giovanni Manfredi and Fabrice Valsaque},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.01889},
  year   = {2021}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:48:54.876Z