A binary collision Monte Carlo model for electron-ion temperature relaxation

Monte Carlo models have been widely used in particle simulations to efficiently solve Coulomb collisions in plasma systems. A binary collision Monte Carlo model is proposed for electron-ion temperature relaxation, which involves all types of collisions and uses the effective maximum and minimum impact parameters that are found previously from Particle-Particle simulations. This binary model and a commonly used model, Nanbu's model, are compared with a Particle-Particle model which serves as a baseline. The results of the binary model match very well with those of the Particle-Particle, but not with those of Nanbu's, meaning that the binary model is more accurate than Nanbu's model for the plasma condition considered. An additional finding is that the effective maximum and minimum impact parameters can be used to calculate the Coulomb logarithm to improve the accuracy of Nanbu's model.