English

Geometric integration of the Vlasov-Maxwell system with a variational particle-in-cell scheme

Plasma Physics 2015-06-18 v1 Accelerator Physics Computational Physics

Abstract

A fully variational, unstructured, electromagnetic particle-in-cell integrator is developed for integration of the Vlasov-Maxwell equations. Using the formalism of Discrete Exterior Calculus, the field solver, interpolation scheme and particle advance algorithm are derived through minimization of a single discrete field theory action. As a consequence of ensuring that the action is invariant under discrete electromagnetic gauge transformations, the integrator exactly conserves Gauss's law.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1401.6723,
  title  = {Geometric integration of the Vlasov-Maxwell system with a variational particle-in-cell scheme},
  author = {Jonathan Squire and Hong Qin and William M. Tang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1401.6723},
  year   = {2015}
}