Eulerian simulations of electrostatic waves in plasmas with a single sign of charge

TL;DR

This paper presents an Eulerian simulation method for modeling electrostatic plasma waves in non-neutral plasmas confined in a Penning-Malmberg trap, successfully capturing wave launching and validating results against analytic solutions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel Eulerian simulation approach that effectively models wave launching in finite-length non-neutral plasmas while leveraging periodic boundary conditions.

Findings

Successfully simulated launching of Trivelpiece-Gould and electron acoustic waves.

Validated simulation results against linearized analytic solutions.

Demonstrated the method's effectiveness for finite-length plasma wave modeling.

Abstract

An Eulerian, numerical simulation is used to model the launching of plasma waves in a non-neutral plasma that is confined in a Penning-Malmberg trap. The waves are launched by applying an oscillating potential to an electrically isolated sector at one end of the conducting cylinder that bounds the confinement region and are received by another electrically isolated sector at the other end of the cylinder. The launching of both Trivelpiece-Gould waves and electron acoustic waves is investigated. Adopting a stratagem, the simulation captures essential features of the finite length plasma, while retaining the numerical advantages of a simulation employing periodic spatial boundary conditions. As a benchmark test of the simulation, the results for launched Trivelpiece-Gould waves of small amplitude are successfully compared to a linearized analytic solution for these fluctuations.