2007/01/02 by Wim Vanroose, Vanroose, Wim, Giovanni Samaey +3
Computer Science · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Lattice Boltzmann Simulation Studies #Nonlinear Dynamics and Pattern Formation #physics.comp-ph #stochastic dynamics and bifurcation
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.physics/0701031
Submitted to Physical Review E
arxiv created 2007/01/02 · openalex publication_date 2007/01/02 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We study the traveling wave solutions of a lattice Boltzmann model for the planar streamer fronts that appear in the transport of electrons through a gas in a strong electrical field. To mimic the physical properties of the impact ionization reaction, we introduce a reaction matrix containing reaction rates that depend on the electron velocities. Via a Chapman--Enskog expansion, one is able to find only a rough approximation for a macroscopic evolution law that describes the traveling wave solution. We propose to compute these solutions with the help of a coarse-grained time-stepper, which is an effective evolution law for the macroscopic fields that only uses appropriately initialized simulations of the lattice Boltzmann model over short time intervals. The traveling wave solution is found as a fixed point of the sequential application of the coarse-grained time-stepper and a shift-back operator. The fixed point is then computed with a Newton-Krylov Solver. We compare the resulting solutions with those of the approximate PDE model, and propose a method to find the minimal physical wave speed.