Kinetics of hydrogen molecules in MAGNUM-PSI

Results from simulations of plasma and neutrals under conditions predictively characterizing the detached plasma regime in the linear machine MAGNUM-PSI are presented. The relaxation of the vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules is investigated in order to establish a relation between their relaxation and dwell times, and the role of the various mechanisms of the molecular vibrational kinetics. The results obtained show that the individual vibrational states have to be included in the transport code for neutrals as distinct species, since the relaxation time of the vibrational states is sufficiently longer than the typical dwell time of hydrogen molecules in the detached plasma region. The parameters of plasma and neutrals are affected by the transport of the vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules. Furthermore, the rate of molecular recombination is overestimated by a factor of similar to 5 provided that the transport of hydrogen molecules only in their ground vibrational state is considered. The role of the various processes of vibrational kinetics is studied. The vibrational excitation through singlet electronic states has a strong influence on the molecular densities for levels with vibrational quantum numbers v >= 5. Vibration-vibration (V-V) collisions between vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules and vibration-translation (V-T) collisions between vibrationally excited hydrogen molecules and ground state molecules and atoms are of minor importance in MAGNUM-PSI.