Prof Hitchon is a renown expert in the field of modeling and simulation of technical plasmas. He is the creator of the "Convective Scheme", a semi-Lagrangian scheme for the solution of Boltzmann's equation, which is at the basis of a kinetic description of a plasma. Prof Hitchon visited us during the first phase of the TR87 project and his most recent visit gave us the opportunity to renew this fruitful collaboration. On Friday June 19th, Prof Hitchon presented an overview of his most recent findings in the field of breakdown and magnetron simulations. Our guest introduced a number of experiments and his attempts to develop tools able to explain the observations: these tools are characterized by multiple levels of description (e.g. analytic model, simple fluid model, detailed kinetic model). Particularly relevant to the SFB TR87 project is Prof Hitchon's understanding of magnetized discharges. High Power Pulsed Magnetron Sputtering (HPPMS) systems are in fact the focus of several projects with the TR87 framework, and are known to exhibit a wide range of instabilities in their principal operation regime. The workshop was intense and fruitful for both parties, and TET will continue a close collaboration with Prof Hitchon, particularly on the study of the evolution of the electron distribution function in HPPMS discharges.
