Breakdown of a space charge limited regime of a sheath in a weakly collisional plasma bounded by walls with secondary electron emission.

A new regime of plasma-wall interaction is identified in particle-in-cell simulations of a hot plasma bounded by walls with secondary electron emission. Such a plasma has a strongly non-Maxwellian electron velocity distribution function and consists of bulk plasma electrons and beams of secondary electrons. In the new regime, the plasma sheath is not in a steady space charge limited state even though the secondary electron emission produced by the plasma bulk electrons is so intense that the corresponding partial emission coefficient exceeds unity. Instead, the plasma-sheath system performs relaxation oscillations by switching quasiperiodically between the space charge limited and non-space-charge limited states.