Development and improvement of a novel particle in cell code for plasma application in space and fusion

In the recent years the PIC simulations of plasma sources have become increasingly important to investigate nonlinear wave-particle interactions in space plasmas. In PIC simulations, individual particles are tracked in a Lagrangian frame in continuous phase space, whereas moments of the distribution such as densities and currents are computed simultaneously on Eulerian (stationary) mesh points. Recently a new 3D PIC code has been developed at the University of Padua, named F3MPIC. In the present study we have developed a new version of the 3D PIC F3MPIC code, studying and validating new algorithms to manage the interactions between charged particles. In particular this thesis is structured as follows: firstly we have introduced and validated a completely new Monte Carlo model to treat in a consistent and efficient manner the interactions between charged particles and neutral ones; secondly we have developed and validated a new "charge conserving" method in electromagnetic particle-in-cell simulations; in particular a first integration with a new electromagnetic solver, called ADAMANT, has been proposed. Finally a new high versatile particles tracking algorithm has been grown up and tested. In particular a new algorithm to manage secondary electrons emission has been introduced and made compatible with the new tracking. If compared with other computational models or with previous F3MPIC developed tools, the new algorithms are more efficient and highly innovative. These new tools have been used to characterize a high-power (> 1KW) helicon plasma source (HPT) that is now in development at CISAS, a research group of Padua University. The presented work has been performed in collaboration with T4I S.r.l., which is a spin-off of the University of Padua.