Travelling-wave-sustained discharges

This review is on discharges maintained by travelling waves: new plasma sources, discovered in 1974 and considered as a prototype of the gas discharges according to their definition as nonlinear systems which unify in a self-consistent manner plasmas and fields. In the presentation here of the fluid-plasma models of the diffusion-controlled regime of the travelling-wave-sustained discharges (TWSDs), the basic features of the discharge maintenance—the discharge self-consistency and the electron heating in the high-frequency field—are stressed. Operation of stationary and pulsed discharges, discharge maintenance without and in external magnetic fields as well as discharge production in different gases (argon, helium, helium–argon gas mixtures and hydrogen) are covered. Modulation instability of diffusion-controlled discharges and discharge filamentation at higher gas pressures are also included in the review. Experimental findings which motivate aspects of the reported modelling are pointed out.