The LXCAT project: An overview and a brief progress report

Summary form only given. LXCat is an open-access website (www.lxcat.net) for exchanging data related to ion and electron transport and scattering cross sections in cold, neutral gases. Such data are necessary for the modeling of low temperature plasmas. Since its beginning in 2009, both the number of contributors and the number of users of LXCat has continued to increase. At present, the LXCat team includes more than 30 people from 12 countries and more than 20 databases are available on LXCat.The "data types" available at present on LXCat include electron-neutral and ion-neutral scattering cross sections from measurements or from quantum calculations as well as compilations thereof; differential cross sections; electron and ion transport coefficients; and optical oscillator strengths. Online tools allow easy access to specific data sets/types, uploading and downloading data (with references included the file header), and plotting and rescaling options to facilitate comparisons among databases. Many databases include "complete" sets of electron-neutral cross section covering a range of energies from thermal up to about 1 keV, compiled and occasionally rescaled or otherwise adjusted in order to be consistent with measured transport coefficients. "Complete" in this context means that the cross section data are detailed enough to yield accurate steady-state energy distribution for electrons subjected to the combined influences of a uniform electric field and collisions with a uniform background gas. Thus, these data can be used directly in a Boltzmann equation solver to calculate transport and rate coefficients as a function of electron temperature (for Maxwellian distributions) or as a function of E/N, the ratio of the electric field strength to the neutral density or as a function of the average electron energy (for nonMaxwellian distributions). A Boltzmann solver is available on the LXCat site for this purpose.