3D cylindrical particle-in-cell simulations for the plasma instability in the cross-field condition

There are various devices using cross-field discharges such as Penning traps, hall thrusters, magnetron sputtering systems, and so on. One characteristic of these devices is that there are magnetized electrons which increase the plasma density and unmagnetized ions emitted from the devices. In other words, they are partially ionized plasmas with lower magnetic field compared with the fully ionized plasmas in tokamaks. The complex physics including plasma turbulence and transport of this kind of system has not been fully revealed yet. This study focuses on the investigation of plasma instability occurred in this condition. Basically, it has a kind of Kelvin-Helmholtz instability due to the velocity shear caused by the ExB drift, and the collisions of charged particles with neutral gases affect the physics as well obviously. In this study, 3D cylindrical particle-in-cell simulations are performed to analyze the kinetics of plasmas including the perpendicular motion to the cross-field with not only axially periodic but also bounded conditions.