A PIC based procedure for the integration of multiple time scale problems in gas discharge physics

A efficient PIC technique has been implemented to study the development of electrical discharges during long periods of time. Special motivation is provided by electrical pulsations that develop in very short times but whose repetition period is much longer. The method exploits the existence of different time scales in the electrical discharge to implement a long time-step particle pushing technique both at particle and at mesh levels. The development of a train of hundreds of Trichel pulses, which is a prohibitively long computation with a conventional PIC, has been used to test the validity of the method.