Prof Hitchon visits TET

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.