An Asymptotic-Preserving and Energy-Conserving Particle-In-Cell Method for Vlasov-Maxwell Equations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an advanced Particle-In-Cell algorithm for the Vlasov-Maxwell equations that conserves energy, preserves Gauss's law, and remains stable across different plasma regimes, including the quasi-neutral limit.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel asymptotic-preserving and energy-conserving PIC method that ensures stability and accuracy in plasma simulations across multiple scales.

Findings

Accurately simulates plasma dynamics in kinetic and quasi-neutral regimes

Preserves Gauss's law and energy conservation in numerical schemes

Demonstrates stability and accuracy through benchmark tests

Abstract

In this paper, we develop an asymptotic-preserving and energy-conserving (APEC) Particle-In-Cell (PIC) algorithm for the Vlasov-Maxwell system. This algorithm not only guarantees that the asymptotic limiting of the discrete scheme is a consistent and stable discretization of the quasi-neutral limit of the continuous model, but also preserves Gauss's law and energy conservation at the same time, thus it is promising to provide stable simulations of complex plasma systems even in the quasi-neutral regime. The key ingredients for achieving these properties include the generalized Ohm's law for electric field such that the asymptotic-preserving discretization can be achieved, and a proper decomposition of the effects of the electromagnetic fields such that a Lagrange multiplier method can be appropriately employed for correcting the kinetic energy. We investigate the performance of the APEC method with three benchmark tests in one dimension, including the linear Landau damping, the bump-on-tail problem and the two-stream instability. Detailed comparisons are conducted by including the results from the classical explicit leapfrog and the previously developed asymptotic-preserving PIC schemes. Our numerical experiments show that the proposed APEC scheme can give accurate and stable simulations both kinetic and quasi-neutral regimes, demonstrating the attractive properties of the method crossing scales.