Modeling of transient effects in resonant discharges

Summary form only given. In a resonantly sustained discharge, a plasma is maintained with an RF field driven at the series resonance-the frequency at which the capacitive sheaths of the plasma resonate with the inductive bulk. Such a discharge has many unique properties including resistive V-I characteristics (V-I phase difference near zero), scaling laws (density is proportional to the cube of the drive frequency) and heating mechanisms (strongly kinetic). A simplified model of the discharge is being developed to explain these transient effects. The model is an extension of the homogeneous model used for calculation of discharge steady state parameters given by Lichtenberg and Lieberman (1994). Initial results look promising-giving qualitative agreement with the some effects discussed above. The model results will be compared with simulations and experiments.