A cancellation problem in hybrid particle-in-cell schemes due to finite particle size
Plasma Physics
2020-08-26 v1 Computational Physics
Space Physics
Abstract
The quasi-neutral hybrid particle-in-cell algorithm with kinetic ions and fluid electrons is a popular model to study multi-scale problems in laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasmas. Here, it is shown that the treatment of ions as finite-size particles and electrons as a grid-based fluid can cause significant numerical wave dispersion errors in the magnetohydrodynamic limit (, where is the ion skin-depth). Practical requirements on the mesh spacing are suggested to bound these errors from above.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1912.04860,
title = {A cancellation problem in hybrid particle-in-cell schemes due to finite particle size},
author = {A. Stanier and L. Chacon and A. Le},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1912.04860},
year = {2020}
}