Electrostatic PIC with adaptive Cartesian mesh

TL;DR

This paper presents an initial implementation of an electrostatic Particle-in-Cell (ES-PIC) method with adaptive Cartesian mesh, demonstrating its validation and capabilities in plasma simulations involving high-pressure gas breakdown.

Contribution

The paper introduces a novel ES-PIC solver with cell-based adaptive mesh refinement integrated into a unified framework, addressing challenges of particle management and numerical noise.

Findings

Validated for capacitively coupled plasma

Demonstrated AMR in streamer development

Showed efficient particle management in ionization events

Abstract

We describe an initial implementation of an electrostatic Particle-in-Cell (ES-PIC) module with adaptive Cartesian mesh in our Unified Flow Solver framework. Challenges of PIC method with cell-based adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) are related to a decrease of the particle-per-cell number in the refined cells with a corresponding increase of the numerical noise. The developed ES-PIC solver is validated for capacitively coupled plasma, its AMR capabilities are demonstrated for simulations of streamer development during high-pressure gas breakdown. It is shown that cell-based AMR provides a convenient particle management algorithm for exponential multiplications of electrons and ions in the ionization events.