An improved secondary electrons energy spectrum model and its application in multipactor discharge

Secondary electron emission (SEE) of metal and dielectric materials plays a key role in multipactor discharge, which is a bottle neck problem for high-power satelliate components. Measurements of both the secondary electron yield (SEY) and the secondary electron energy spectrum (SES) are performed on metal samples for an accurate description of the real SEE phenomenon. In order to simplify the fitting process and improve the simulation efficiency, an improved model is proposed for the description of secondary electrons (SE) emitted from the material surface, including true, elastic, and inelastic SE. Embedding the novel SES model into the electromagnetic particle-in-cell method, the electronic resonant multipactor in microwave components is simulated successfully and hence the discharge threshold is predicted. Simulation results of the SES variation in the improved model demonstrate that the multipactor threshold is strongly dependent on SES. In addition, the mutipactor simulation results agree quite well with the experiment for the practical microwave component, while the numerical model of SEY and SES fits well with the sample data taken from the microwave component.