A conservative scheme for the relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system (Q846593)

A new scheme for the numerical integration of the 1D2V relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system is proposed. Assuming that all particles in a cell of the phase space move with the same velocity as that of the particle located at the center of the cell at the beginning of each time step, the system is successfully integrated without any artificial loss of particles. Furthermore, splitting the equations into advection and interaction parts, the method conserves the sum of the kinetic energy of particles and the electromagnetic energy. Three test problems, the gyration of particles, the Weibel instability, and the wakefield acceleration, are solved by using the new scheme. It is confirmed that the scheme can reproduce analytical results of the problems. Especially the tail of the distribution functions where only a tiny fraction of particles reside seems to be solved with considerably high accuracy, while PIC simulations would suffer from large statistical errors there. Though it is dealt with the 1D2V relativistic Vlasov-Maxwell system, the method can also be applied to the 2D3V and 3D3V cases.