Related papers: When should PIC simulations be applied to atmosphe…
Direct studies of intense laser-solid interactions is still of great challenges, because of the many coupled physical mechanisms, such as direct laser heating, ionization dynamics, collision among charged particles, and electrostatic or…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to model ion and neutral temperature evolution in partially-ionized atmospheric pressure plasma at different ionization fractions. Results show that ion-ion interactions are strongly coupled at…
The process of numerical thermalization in particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations has been studied extensively. It is analogous to Coulomb collisions in real plasmas, causing particle velocity distributions (VDFs) to evolve towards a Maxwellian…
Atmospheric pressure helium plasmas are investigated through molecular dynamics simulations at room temperature (300 K) for various ionization fractions ($\chi_i = 10^{-1} - 10^{-5}$) in the strongly coupled regime (ion coupling parameter,…
With the great development of parallel computing techniques, the particle-particle (PP) model has been successfully applied in a number of plasma applications. Comparing to particle-mesh (PM) models, for example the widely used…
Three-dimensional (3D) particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations are used to investigate the interaction of ultrahigh intensity lasers ($> 10^{20}$ W/cm$^{-2}$) with matter at overcritical densities. Intense laser pulses are shown to penetrate up…
When a charged particle moves through a plasma at a speed much higher than the thermal velocity of the plasma, it is subjected to the force of the electrostatic field induced in the plasma by itself and loses its energy. This process is…
Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method is a powerful plasma simulation tool for investigating high-intensity femtosecond laser-matter interaction. However, its simulation capability at high-density plasmas around the Fermi temperature is considered…
When supersonic plasma flows collide, many physical processes contribute to the morphology of the resulting shock. One of these processes is the acceleration of non-thermal ions, which will, eventually, reach relativistic speeds and become…
Recent work has shown that ions are strongly coupled in atmospheric pressure plasmas when the ionization fraction is sufficiently large, leading to a temperature increase from disorder-induced heating that is not accounted for in standard…
There are many interesting physical processes which involve the generation of high density plasmas in large volumes. However, when modeling these systems numerically, the large densities and volumes present a significant computational…
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…
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)…
We use particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations and simple analytic models to investigate the laser-plasma interaction known as ponderomotive steepening. When normally incident laser light reflects at the critical surface of a plasma, the…
Particle acceleration in collisionless plasma systems is a central question in astroplasma and astroparticle physics. The structure of the acceleration regions, electron-ion energy equilibration, preacceleration of particles at shocks to…
In most PIC/MCC simulations of radio frequency capacitively coupled plasmas (CCPs) several simplifications are made: (i) fast neutrals are not traced, (ii) heavy particle induced excitation and ionization are neglected, (iii) secondary…
Complex plasmas are low-temperature plasmas that contain micrometer-size particles in addition to the neutral gas particles and the ions and electrons that make up the plasma. The microparticles interact strongly and display a wealth of…
We describe a method for coupling an embedded domain in a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulation with a particle-in-cell (PIC) method. In this two-way coupling we follow the work of Daldorff et al. in which the PIC domain receives its initial…
The microphysical, kinetic properties of astrophysical plasmas near accreting compact objects are still poorly understood. For instance, in modern general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations, the relation between the temperature of…
In inertial confinement fusion (ICF), the dynamics of plasma mixing in hohlraums critically influence laser-plasma instabilities (LPI) and implosion performance. This study investigates the mixing of hohlraum ablated Au plasmas and filling…