A High-Order Accurate Particle-in-Cell Method for Vlasov-Poisson Problems Over Long Time Integrations

Speaker: Andrew Myers, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
November 10, 2016

Presentation

Abstract

The Vlasov-Poisson system of equations is used to model collisionless fluid flows in both plasma physics and cosmology. Particle methods—especially the popular Particle-in-Cell technique—are a common approach to obtaining numerical solutions to this system. However, these methods have several downsides. First, they are usually limited to 2nd-order accuracy. Second, they are known to suffer from particle noise effects that degrade the accuracy of the numerical solution over long time integrations. In this talk, I will describe a new Particle-in-Cell method does not suffer from these problems. Our method is 4th-order accurate in both space and time and uses a 6th-order phase-space remapping technique to control particle noise at late times. I will describe the implementation of our algorithm using the Chombo framework for solving partial differential equations and demonstrate its performance on a set of standard test problems.

Biography

Andrew Myers received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley, where he used radiation-magnetohydrodynamic simulations to study star formation in the interstellar medium. After that, he was a postdoctoral researcher in the Applied Numerical Algorithms Group at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he focused on particle methods for astrophysics and plasma physics simulations. He is also interested in a variety of other topics within scientific computing, including adaptive mesh refinement algorithms, reproducibility, and data analysis and visualization.

Seminar Participation

Attending In Person

For select seminars, you may wish to attend in-person if you are in the vicinity of NASA Ames Research Center. These AMS seminars are held in Building N258 in Room 127, just off the front lobby. Sessions available to attend in-person will be indicated in the announcement information. In-person participants without NASA badges will need a valid visitor badge (US citizenship or permanent residency is required) to enter the facility.

Join Us Online

To attend an AMS seminar, click on the Microsoft Teams link in the seminar description. You can connect through the desktop Teams App if you have it, or you can select "Watch on the Web Instead" to enter the meeting as a guest. Please ensure that you've muted your microphone in Teams before you select "Join Now" to enter the meeting lobby.