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An Explicit Energy-Conserving Particle Method for the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck Equation

Plasma Physics 2025-10-07 v1 Mathematical Physics math.MP

Abstract

We propose an explicit particle method for the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck equation that conserves energy at the fully discrete level. The method features two key components: a deterministic and conservative particle discretization for the nonlinear Fokker-Planck operator (also known as the Lenard-Bernstein or Dougherty operator), and a second-order explicit time integrator that ensures energy conservation through an accuracy-justifiable correction. We validate the method on several plasma benchmarks, including collisional Landau damping and two-stream instability, demonstrating its effectiveness.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2510.03960,
  title  = {An Explicit Energy-Conserving Particle Method for the Vlasov-Fokker-Planck Equation},
  author = {Jiyoung Yoo and Jingwei Hu and Lee F. Ricketson},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2510.03960},
  year   = {2025}
}