# 1. Tutorial¶

This tutorial will guide you through all the step that you must follow in order to use BOLOS in your code to solve the Boltzmann equation.

## 1.1. Installation¶

BOLOS is a pure Python package and it sticks to the Python conventions for the distribution of libraries. Its only dependencies are NumPy and SciPy. See here for installation instructions of these packages for your operating system.

There are a few ways to have BOLOS installed in your system:

git clone https://github.com/aluque/bolos.git


This will create a bolos folder with the full code, examples and documentation source. You can then install bolos by e.g. typing:

python setup.py install


Alternatively since BOLOS is pure python package, you can put the bolos/ sub-folder to whatever place where it can be found by the Python interpreter (including your PYTHONPATH).

2. You can use the Python Package Index (PyPI). From there you can download a tarball or you can instruct pip to download the package for you and install it in your system:

pip install bolos


## 1.2. First steps¶

To start using bolos from your Python, import the required modules:

from bolos import parser, grid, solver


Usually you only need to import these three packages:

• parser contains methods to parse a file with cross-sections in BOLSIG+ format,
• grid allows you to define different types of grids in energy space.
• solver contains the solver.BoltzmannSolver, which the class that you will use to solve the Boltzmann equation.

Now you can define an energy grid where you want to evaluate the electron energies. The :module:grid contains a few classes to do this. The simplest one defines a linear grid. Let’s create a grid extending from 0 to 20 eV with 200 cells:

gr = grid.LinearGrid(0, 60., 200)


We want to use this grid in a solver.BoltzmannSolver instance that we initialize as:

boltzmann = solver.BoltzmannSolver(gr)


The next step is to load a set of cross-sections for the processes that will affect the electrons. BOLOS does not come with any set of cross-sections. You can obtain them from the great database LxCat. BOLOS can read without changes files downloaded from LxCat.

Now let’s tell boltzmann to load a set of cross-sections from a file named lxcat.dat:

with open('lxcat.dat') as fp:
processes = parser.parse(fp)


Do not worry if there are processes for species that you do not want to include: they will be ignored by BOLOS without a performance penalty.

## 1.4. Setting the conditions¶

Now we have to set the conditions in our plasma. First, we set the molar fractions; for example for synthetic air we do:

boltzmann.target['N2'].density = 0.8
boltzmann.target['O2'].density = 0.2


Note that this process requires that you have already loaded cross-sections for the targets that you are setting. Also, BOLOS does not check if the molar fractions add to 1: it is the user’s responsibility to select reasonable molar fractions.

Next we set the gas temperature and the reduced electric field. BOLOS expect a reduced electric field in Vm^2 and a temperature in eV. However, you can use some predefined constants if you prefer to think in terms of Kelvin and Townsend. Here we set a temperature of 300K and a reduced electric field of 120 Td:

boltzmann.kT = 300 * solver.KB / solver.ELECTRONVOLT
boltzmann.EN = 120 * solver.TOWNSEND


After you set these conditions, you must tell BOLOS to update its internal state to take them into account. You must do this whenever you change kT, EN or the underlying grid:

boltzmann.init()


## 1.5. Obtaining the EEDF¶

We have now everything in place to solve the Boltzmann equation. Since the solver is iterative, we must start with some guess; it does not make much difference which one as long as it is not too unreasonable. For example, we can start with Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution with a temperature of 2 eV:

fMaxwell = boltzmann.maxwell(2.0)


Now we ask boltzmann to iterate the solution until it is satisfied that it has converged:

f = boltzmann.converge(fMaxwell, maxn=100, rtol=1e-5)


Here maxn is the maximum number of iterations and rtol is the desired tolerance.

We now have a distribution function in f that is a reasonable approximation to the exact solution. However, we made some arbitrary choices in order to calculate it and perhaps we may still get a more accurate one. For example, why did we select a grid from 0 to 60 eV with 200 cells? Perhaps we should base our grid on the mean energy of electrons:

# Calculate the mean energy according to the first EEDF
mean_energy = boltzmann.mean_energy(f0)

# Set a new grid extending up to 15 times the mean energy.
# Now we use a quadritic grid instead of a linear one.
newgrid = grid.QuadraticGrid(0, 15 * mean_energy, 200)

# Set the new grid and update the internal
boltzmann.grid = newgrid
boltzmann.init()

# Calculate an EEDF in the new grid by interpolating the old one
finterp = boltzmann.grid.interpolate(f, gr)

# Iterate until we have a new solution
f1 = boltzmann.converge(finterp, maxn=200, rtol=1e-5)


## 1.6. Calculating transport coefficients and reaction rates¶

Often you are not interested in the EEDF itself but you are working with a fluid clode and you want to know the transport coefficients and reaction rates as functions of temperature or E/n.

It’s quite easy to obtain the reduced mobility and diffusion rate once you have the EEDF:

mun = boltzmann.mobility(f1)
diffn = boltzmann.diffusion(f1)


This tells you the reduced mobility mu*n and diffusion D*n, both in SI units.

To calculate reaction rates, use solver.BoltzmannSolver.rate(). There are a couple of manners in which you can specify the process. You can use its signature:

# Obtain the reaction rate for impact ionization of molecular nitrogen.
k = boltzmann.rate(f1, "N2 -> N2^+")


This is equivalent to the following sequence:

proc = boltzmann.search("N2 -> N2^+")[0]
k = boltzmann.rate(f1, proc)


Here we have first looked in the set of reactions contained in the boltzmann instance for a process matching the signature “N2 -> N2^+”. solver.BoltzmannSolver.search() returns a process.Process instance that you can then pass to solver.BoltzmannSolver.rate().

The methods solver.BoltzmannSolver.iter_all(), solver.BoltzmannSolver.iter_elastic() and solver.BoltzmannSolver.iter_inelastic() let you iterate over the targets and processes contained in a solver.BoltzmannSolver instance. (These are the processes that we loaded earlier with soler.BoltzmannSolver.load_collisions())

for target, proc in boltzmann.iter_inelastic():
print "The rate of %s is %g" % (str(proc), boltzmann.rate(f1, proc))