Numerical simulation of high power microwave breakdown on dielectric surface at different gas pressures

This paper presents the electrostatic particle-in-cell (PIC) Monte Carlo collisions (MCC) method for simulating the breakdown on dielectric surface illuminated by high-power microwaves, and the dielectric surface breakdown at different pressures in argon is simulated by the PIC-MCC code. The temporal evolution of the number of particles and the mean kinetic energy of electrons, and the breakdown delay time are obtained. The simulation results show that, in the case of low pressure, the influence of multipactor is visible, while the number of electrons increases slowly after saturation and the breakdown delay is long. As the pressure increases, the influence of multipactor becomes smaller with gas ionization starting to dominate the breakdown process, and the breakdown delay gradually becom