Related papers: Enhancing one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulat…
Kinetic Particle In Cell (PIC) methods can extend greatly their range of applicability if implicit time differencing and spatial adaption are used to address the wide range of time and length scales typical of plasmas. For implicit…
Ions in Hall effect thrusters are often characterized by a low collisionality. In the presence of acceleration fields and azimuthal electric field waves, this results in strong deviations from thermodynamic equilibrium, introducing kinetic…
We extend the recently-developed explicit, energy-conserving particle-in-cell (PIC) scheme of [1] to the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system. As in the non-relativistic case, the method is built on an optimization problem that is…
Low frequency ionization oscillations involving plasma and neutral density (breathing modes) are the most violent perturbations in Hall thrusters for electric propulsion. Because of its simplicity, the zero-dimensional (0-D) predator-prey…
The expansion of a magnetized high-pressure plasma into a low-pressure ambient medium is examined with particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. The magnetic field points perpendicularly to the plasma's expansion direction and binary collisions…
Non-invasive flow measurement techniques, such as particle tracking velocimetry, resolve 3D velocity fields by pairing tracer particle positions in successive time steps. These trajectories are crucial for evaluating physical quantities…
A Particle-in-Cell (PIC) numerical simulation of the electron Weibel instability is applied in a frame of Darwin (radiationless) approximation of the self-consistent fields of sparse plasma. As a result, we were able to supplement the…
We demonstrate a novel setup for hybrid particle-in-cell simulations designed to isolate the physics of the shock precursor over long time periods for significantly lower computational cost than previous methods. This is achieved using a…
The effects of noise in particle-in-cell (PIC) and Vlasov simulations of the Buneman instability in unmagnetized plasmas are studied. It is found that, in the regime of low drift velocity, the linear stage of the instability in PIC…
The linear and nonlinear characteristics of the electron cyclotron drift instability (ECDI) have been studied through the particle-in-cell (PIC) and continuum Vlasov simulation methods in connection with the effects of the azimuthal length…
Kinetic plasma processes, such as magnetic reconnection, collisionless shocks, and turbulence, are fundamental to the dynamics of astrophysical and laboratory plasmas. Simulating these processes often requires particle-in-cell (PIC)…
Previous theoretical considerations of electron beam relaxation in inhomogeneous plasmas have indicated that the effects of the irregular solar wind may account for the poor agreement of homogeneous modelling with the observations.…
Explicit structure-preserving geometric Particle-in-Cell (PIC) algorithm in curvilinear orthogonal coordinate systems is developed. The work reported represents a further development of the structure-preserving geometric PIC algorithm…
The quasi-neutral hybrid model with kinetic ions and fluid electrons is a promising approach for bridging the inherent multi-scale nature of many problems in space and laboratory plasmas. Here, a novel, implicit, particle-in-cell based…
We study both theoretically and experimentally the nonlinear interaction between an intense surface acoustic wave and a two-dimensional electron plasma in semiconductor-piezocrystal hybrid structures. The experiments on hybrid systems…
In collision-poor plasmas from space, e.g., solar wind or stellar outflows, the heat-flux carried by the strahl or beaming electrons is expected to be regulated by the self-generated instabilities. Recently, simultaneous field and particle…
A fundamental task in particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of plasma physics is solving for charged particle motion in electromagnetic fields. This problem is especially challenging when the plasma is strongly magnetized due to numerical…
Internal kink instabilities have been studied in straight tokamak geometry employing an electromagnetic gyrokinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) code. The ideal-MHD internal kink mode and the collisionless $m = 1$ tearing mode have been…
Electrostatic particle-in-cell simulations of a Penning discharge are performed in order to investigate azimuthally asymmetric, spoke-like structures previously observed in experiments. Two-dimensional simulations show that for…
Particle-in-Cell (PIC) methods are widely used computational tools for fluid and kinetic plasma modeling. While both the fluid and kinetic PIC approaches have been successfully used to target either kinetic or fluid simulations, little was…