Simulation Benchmark of the XPDP1 PIC-MCC Code for Capacitively Coupled Plasma Helium Discharges

The particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) code, XPDP1, originally designed by Plasma Theory and Simulation Group (PTSG) at UC Berkeley now at Michigan State University, is an extensively used bounded electrostatic code for modeling one-dimensional (1-D) plasma devices in both academia and industry. In-depth benchmarks of five 1-D PIC-MCC codes for low-pressure capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) discharges were performed by Turner et al. The XPDP1 was left out, nevertheless. In this study, we use the same four cases of CCP discharges in helium to benchmark the simulation performance of the XPDP1 code. We describe the analysis of the differences in a helium CCP discharge between using the imported LXCat data of helium cross sections and the functional cross sections originally used in the XPDP1 code, as the cross section data play a crucial role in describing charge and neutral collisions in a plasma discharge. Along with computing speeds and the amount of time needed to reach steady states, the plasma densities and distributions resulting from various cross sections are contrasted with published PIC-MCC results as well as predictions made by moment models that were implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics. According to the results, the PTSG code users may require an update in order to use the LXCat cross section data for their plasma discharge studies.