Low-pressure inductive discharges

This review is on modelling of inductive discharges at low gas pressures. Both the gas-discharge part and the electrodynamical part of the models are stressed as completing a self-consistent description of the discharge structure. The gas-discharge description covers the two regimes of the discharge maintenance at low gas pressures: ambipolar-diffusion controlled discharges and discharges in a free-fall regime. The electrodynamical description of the discharge starts with analysis of the types of the skin of the transverse high-frequency bulk waves which produce the inductive discharges. Normal collisional skin providing conditions for local conductivity and anomalous skin related to nonlocal conductivity are discussed as resulting in the different types of the power deposition in the different regimes of low-pressure discharges: Joule heating in the ambipolar-controlled discharges and stochastic heating in the free-fall regime of the discharge maintenance