Simulation benchmarks of the XPDP1 PIC-MCC code on capacitively coupled plasma helium discharges

The particle-in-cell Monte Carlo collision (PIC-MCC) code, XPDP1, developed by Plasma Theory and Simulation Group (PTSG) formerly at UC Berkeley now at Michigan State University is a bounded electrostatic code for simulating one-dimensional (1-D) plasma devices and widely used in academia and industry. Turner et al. did detailed benchmarks of five 1-D PIC-MCC codes for low-pressure plasmas. However, the XPDP1 was not included. In this study, we conduct a simulation benchmark of the XPDP1 code using the same four cases of capacitively coupled plasma (CCP) discharge in helium. As the cross section data play an important role in describing charge and neutral collisions in a plasma discharge, we report the investigation of the differences in a helium CCP discharge between employing the imported LXCat data of helium cross sections and the functional cross sections originally used in the XPDP1 code. In addition to the time required to reach steady states and the computing speeds, the plasma densities and distributions due to different cross sections are compared to the PIC-MCC results in the literature as well as those predicted by a moment model as implemented in COMSOL Multiphysics. The results suggest that the users of the PTSG codes might need an update to use the LXCat cross section data for their plasma discharge studies.