Modelling of intense plasma source discharges in one and two dimensions

As part of the research programme to develop intense ion sources for fusion and defence applications, codes have been developed to explain the behaviour of hydrogen plasmas in magnetic multipole discharges. These discharges contain considerable plasma chemistry effects relating to formation re-vibrational and excited molecular states together with negative ion formation and coulomb scattering. These processes have been incorporated in moments of the Boltzmann equation to model and explain the plasma behaviour in two codes; a 2-D one to give a more detailed picture but needing considerable computational effort and a simpler 1-D model with more detailed chemistry which operates on a PC. The latter is used to give an overview of the source behaviour. The codes are compared with experimental results in several sources with densities ranging up to 3.10¹³ cm^-3 density and can be applied to other gases