Direct numerical simulation of Yukawa systems by particle-in-cell methods

Aiming at a fully self-consistent numerical model for the simulation of complex plasmas in rf-driven discharges, a highly efficient parallel particle-in-cell code has been developed, allowing for realizations of up to one billion interacting particles. As a first test case, we consider a Yukawa system which represents the simplest approximation of a complex plasma. The Yukawa approach where the dust particles are dressed with an isotropic Debye potential can be regarded as a low-order description of the dust-plasma interaction in the bulk a rf-driven complex plasma, away from the electrode sheaths. The simulation code is tested by examining a liquid-solid phase transition, i.e., the formation of a face-centered-cubic Yukawa crystal. This is done in a periodic-cube sub-volume, containing 13,824 dust particles, which corresponds to a total system size of approximate to 884,000 particles.