Energy-Preserving Coupling of Explicit Particle-In-Cell with Monte Carlo Collisions

2024/10/18 by Vay, Jean-Luc, Angus, Justin Ray, Shapoval, Olga +3
#Computational Physics (physics.comp-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)

paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2410.14859

Abstract

The Particle-In-Cell (PIC) and Monte Carlo Collisions (MCC) methods are workhorses of many numerical simulations of physical systems. Recently, it was pointed out that, while the two methods can be exactly - or nearly - energy-conserving independently, combining the two is leading to anomalous numerical heating. This paper reviews the standard explicit PIC-MCC algorithm, elucidates the origins of the anomalous numerical heating and explains how to couple the two methods such that the anomalous numerical heating is avoided.

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