Multiple scale kinetic simulations with the energy conserving semi implicit particle in cell (PIC) method

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the application of the energy conserving semi-implicit PIC (ECsim) method to multi-scale plasma problems, enabling larger time steps while accurately capturing electron kinetic effects and conserving energy.

Contribution

The paper introduces the use of ECsim for multi-scale simulations, allowing larger time steps and grid sizes while retaining key electron kinetic physics and energy conservation.

Findings

ECsim accurately simulates ion acoustic waves.

ECsim captures electron kinetic effects like Landau damping.

ECsim maintains energy conservation at large scales.

Abstract

The recently developed energy conserving semi-implicit method (ECsim) for PIC simulation is applied to multiple scale problems where the electron-scale physics needs to be only partially retained and the interest is on the macroscopic or ion-scale processes. Unlike hybrid methods, the ECsim is capable of providing kinetic electron information, such as wave-electron interaction (Landau damping or cyclotron resonance) and non-Maxwellian electron velocity distributions. However, like hybrid, the ECsim does not need to resolve all electron scales, allowing time steps and grid spacing orders of magnitude larger than in explicit PIC schemes. The additional advantage of the ECsim is that the stability at large scale is obtained while conserving energy exactly. Three examples are presented: ion acoustic waves, electron acoustic instability and reconnection processes.