Effective-Viscosity Approach for Nonlocal Electron Kinetics in Inductively Coupled Plasmas

In inductively coupled plasmas, nonlocal electron kinetics lead to the anomalous skin effect. We show that this can be approximately described through a fluid equation for electron momentum including a viscosity term with an effective-viscosity coefficient. The solution of this momentum equation coupled with the Maxwell equations is in good agreement with results from a particle-in-cell simulation over a wide range of conditions, reproducing the nonmonotonic structure of the anomalous skin with sometimes local negative power absorption.