This project is financed by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Participants: Departments of Physics and Mathematics of UMa. Collaboration: Oxford, Bochum, Moscow, Toulouse. The project began in October of 2000 and will run for 36 months.

A motivation for this work originates in the fact that design of cathodes is of crucial importance for industrial applications of high pressure arc discharges, such as arc heaters, high intensity discharge lamps, high power switches and arc welding. An objective of the project consists of developing analyical and numerical models of interaction of a thermionic cathode with a high pressure arc plasma, applicable in a vast range of operating conditions. This is a highly chalenging multidisciplinary task, requiring the use of methods of physics and of chemistry of plasmas, hydrodynamics, theory of heat conduction, kinetic theory of gases, bifurcation theory, as well as advanced methods of numerical modelling. Besides the technological importance, the problem is of a considerable theoretical interest, in particular due to its relation to the theory of sheaths in low temperature plasmas and with the theory of nonlinear dissipative structures.

We expect to publish about thirteen articles in international journals in the framework of the project. Research Fellow Ricardo Jorge Nóbrega Fernandes partcipates in the project.