Modeling of a plasma column produced and sustained by a traveling electromagnetic surface wave

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Abstract
We present an improved model of a plasma column produced and sustained by a traveling azimuthally symmetric electromagnetic surface wave. The axial density profile of the column as well as the wave dispersion and field and power characteristics are now specified by five parameters: (i) the collision frequency for momentum transfer ν, ν<ω (ω being the wave angular frequency), (ii) the number σ=ωR/c (R is the plasma column radius, c the speed of light), (iii) the number β indicating the gas-discharge regime (B=0 for the diffusion regime and 0<β≤2 for the bulk recombination one), (iv) the permittivity of the container (glass tube) εd, and (v) the number γ=1+d/R (d denoting the thickness of the tube), the last two parameters having been neglected earlier. The influence of εd and γ on the wave dispersion properties and the axial profiles of the plasma density, wave power, and wave electric field components has been studied numerically. Our improved model is tested with the experimental data [A. Sola, A. Gamero, J. Cotrino, and V. Colomer, J. Appl. Phys. 64, 3419 (1988)] of argon plasmas produced by high-frequency surface waves in three different tubes and in a wide range of gas pressures. The agreement between the theory and experiment is very good. The model has been also applied to another particular experimental setup and the results are compared with the corresponding theoretical curves obtained by Sá and Ferreira (Europhysics Conference Abstracts ESCAMPIG 88, Vol. 12H, p. 191) and with the experimental data of Saada, Bloyet, Dervisevic, and Laporte [Université Paris Sud, Rapport L.P. 220 (1983)].

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