2015/03/04 by Guangye Chen, Luis Chacòn, Luis Chacon · 95 citations
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Classical mechanics #Computational physics #Electron #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Momentum (technical analysis) #Physics #Plasma Diagnostics and Applications #Quantum mechanics #Radiative transfer #Statistical physics #Vlasov equation #physics.comp-ph #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.cpc.2015.08.008
published in Computer Physics Communications 197, 73-87 (Elsevier BV) · 35 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2015/03/04 · openalex publication_date 2015/08/11 · arxiv updated 2016/05/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
For decades, the Vlasov-Darwin model has been recognized to be attractive for particle-in-cell (PIC) kinetic plasma simulations in non-radiative electromagnetic regimes, to avoid radiative noise issues and gain computational efficiency. However, the Darwin model results in an elliptic set of field equations that renders conventional explicit time integration unconditionally unstable. Here, we explore a fully implicit PIC algorithm for the Vlasov-Darwin model in multiple dimensions, which overcomes many difficulties of traditional semi-implicit Darwin PIC algorithms. The finite-difference scheme for Darwin field equations and particle equations of motion is space-time-centered, employing particle sub-cycling and orbit-averaging. The algorithm conserves total energy, local charge, canonical-momentum in the ignorable direction, and preserves the Coulomb gauge exactly. An asymptotically well-posed fluid preconditioner allows efficient use of large time steps and cell sizes, which are determined by accuracy considerations, not stability, and can be orders of magnitude larger than required in a standard explicit electromagnetic PIC simulation. We demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency properties of the algorithm with various numerical experiments in 2D-3V.