Characterization of the Darwin direct implicit particle-in-cell method and resulting guidelines for operation (Q675181)

We investigate the linear dispersion and other properties of the Darwin direct implicit particle-in-cell method in order to deduce guidelines for its use in the simulation of long time-scale kinetic phenomena in plasmas. The Darwin part of this algorithm eliminates the Courant constraint for light propagation across a grid cell in a time step and divides the field solution into several elliptic equations. The direct implicit method is only applied to the electrostatic field relieving the need to resolve plasma oscillations. Linear theory and simulations are used to verify the method.