Simulations of ponderomotive effects in inductively coupled plasmas

The electromagnetic quasineutral particle-in-cell code, simulating interaction of a plane electromagnetic wave with a plasma slab, is developed. The code is used to study the ponderomotive effects in a plasma with a finite temperature. Simulations in linear regime show the strong thermal reduction of the ponderomotive force, which is in a good agreement with the linear analytical theory. It is found that in the essentially nonlinear regime, when the electron trajectories are strongly modified, the amplitude of the ponderomotive force increases compared to the linear case, but remains lower than the classical cold plasma value. The transition from nonlinear to linear regime as a function of the amplitude of the driving electromagnetic field is investigated.