Comparison between multifluid and Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of instabilities and boundary layers in low-temperature low pressure magnetized plasmas for electric propulsion applications.

The objective of this work is to assess some of the potential advantages and limitations of finite volume method applied to multifluid equations as compared to Particle-In-Cells (PIC) methods. Hydrogen and Argon plasma discharges in 2D are simulated using a two-fluid isothermal Euler-Poisson equations finite volume method. The structure of sheaths in non-magnetized cases, and the appearance of instabilities in magnetized cases are compared with PIC simulations. We also present preliminary result obtained via a second order discretization finite volume methods using Adaptive Mesh Refinement (AMR) method. Finally, we present ongoing work on adapting a recently developed asymptotic preserving method to the 2D framework presented here. We aim at showing that, and evaluating to what extent, fluid models associated with tailored numerical methods have a lot of potential for plasmas of interest in electric propulsion applications.