English

Nonlinear Landau Collisions Without Collision Tensors

Plasma Physics 2026-06-30 v1

Abstract

Far-from-equilibrium plasmas require nonlinear Coulomb collisions, but direct three-dimensional Hermite discretization of the Landau operator needs an impractical dense tensor. By porting quantum chemistry Coulomb-integral methods, we reduce the six-dimensional integrals to one-center Coulomb moments and separable exponential-sum contractions. This gives a four-order-of-magnitude working-memory reduction and enables nonlinear relaxation tests. Numerical simulations preserve invariants and show that finite-basis linearization changes relaxation and produces a fourfold angular error.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2606.31035,
  title  = {Nonlinear Landau Collisions Without Collision Tensors},
  author = {R. Jorge and B. Herfray and C. Vega and V. Zhdankin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2606.31035},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

6 pages, 3 figures