Recent developments in the kinetic simulations of low-temperature plasmas

Kinetic simulations have been aiding the understanding of the physics of low-temperature plasma sources for several decades. The pioneering studies required access to mainframe / supercomputers of those times, the evolution of computing hardware made these approaches widely accessible; smaller scale simulations can be executed now on desktop / laptop computers. The advance of the computing capabilities was accompanied with improvements of the accuracy and complexity of modeling. The recent developments allow increasing the number of simulation particles by orders of magnitude, suppressing noise and artificial heating effects. Also, widening of the parameter domains became possible, e.g., low pressure discharges operated at extreme conditions (very low pressures and very high voltages) and high (atmospheric) pressure discharges of plasma jets can now be described accurately. Enhancing the reliability and the predictive capability of computational modeling requires benchmarking between different codes, as well as validation of the discharge models and verification of the codes implementing these models. This calls as well for precise reference experiments for measurements of plasma characteristics.