Lattice-Boltzmann simulation of laser interaction with weakly ionized helium plasmas

This paper presents a lattice Boltzmann method for laser interaction with weakly ionized plasmas considering electron impact ionization and three-body recombination. To simulate with physical properties of plasmas, the authors’ previous work on the rescaling of variables is employed and the electromagnetic fields are calculated from the Maxwell equations by using the finite-difference time-domain method. To calculate temperature fields, energy equations are derived separately from the Boltzmann equations. In this way, we attempt to solve the full governing equations for plasma dynamics. With the developed model, the continuous-wave CO₂ laser interaction with helium is simulated successfully.