Numerical instability due to relativistic plasma drift in EM-PIC simulations

DOI10.1016/J.CPC.2013.07.003zbMATH Open1349.76929arXiv1211.0953OpenAlexW2132486476WikidataQ59477579 ScholiaQ59477579MaRDI QIDQ340084FDOQ340084

Authors: Xinlu Xu, Peicheng Yu, Samual F. Martins, Frank S. Tsung, Viktor K. Decyk, Jorge Vieira, Ricardo A. Fonseca, Luis O. Silva, Warren B. Mori, Wei Lü 

Publication date: 11 November 2016

Published in: Computer Physics Communications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: The numerical instability observed in the Electromagnetic-Particle-in-cell (EM-PIC) simulations with a plasma drifting with relativistic velocities is studied using both theory and computer simulations. We derive the numerical dispersion relation for a cold plasma drifting with a relativistic velocity and find an instability attributed to the coupling between the beam modes of the drifting plasma and the electromagnetic modes in the system. The characteristic pattern of the instability in Fourier space for various simulation setups and Maxwell Equation solvers are explored by solving the corresponding numerical dispersion relations. Furthermore, based upon these characteristic patterns we derive an asymptotic expression for the instability growth rate. The asymptotic expression greatly speeds up the calculation of instability growth rate and makes the parameter scan for minimal growth rate feasible even for full three dimensions. The results are compared against simulation results and good agreement is found. These results can be used as a guide to develop possible approaches to mitigate the instability. We examine the use of a spectral solver and show that such a solver when combined with a low pass filter with a cutoff value of $|veck|$ essentially eliminates the instability while not modifying modes of physical interest. The use of spectral solver also provides minimal errors to electromagnetic modes in the lowest Brillouin zones.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1211.0953

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zbMATH Keywords

particle in cellnumerical cherenkov radiationnumerical dispersion relationnumerical instabilityplasma simulationrelativistic plasma drift

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Stability and convergence of numerical methods for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M12) Probabilistic methods, particle methods, etc. for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M75) Particle methods and lattice-gas methods (76M28) Statistical mechanics of plasmas (82D10) Ionized gas flow in electromagnetic fields; plasmic flow (76X05)

Cites Work

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Cited In (22)

• Diagnosing numerical Cherenkov instabilities in relativistic plasma simulations based on general meshes
• Accurately simulating nine-dimensional phase space of relativistic particles in strong fields
• Modeling of laser wakefield acceleration in Lorentz boosted frame using EM-PIC code with spectral solver
• Enabling Lorentz boosted frame particle-in-cell simulations of laser wakefield acceleration in quasi-3D geometry
• Mitigation of numerical Cerenkov radiation and instability using a hybrid finite difference-FFT Maxwell solver and a local charge conserving current deposit
• Suppressing the numerical Cherenkov radiation in the Yee numerical scheme
• The ringing instability in particle-in-cell calculations of low-speed flow
• Implementation of a hybrid particle code with a PIC description in \(r\)-\(z\) and a gridless description in \(\phi\) into OSIRIS
• Numerical stability analysis of the pseudo-spectral analytical time-domain PIC algorithm
• On variational Fourier particle methods
• A new field solver for modeling of relativistic particle-laser interactions using the particle-in-cell algorithm
• A quasi-static particle-in-cell algorithm based on an azimuthal Fourier decomposition for highly efficient simulations of plasma-based acceleration: QPAD
• On numerical errors to the fields surrounding a relativistically moving particle in PIC codes
• Time-step dependent force interpolation scheme for suppressing numerical Cherenkov instability in relativistic particle-in-cell simulations
• Numerical stability of relativistic beam multidimensional PIC simulations employing the Esirkepov algorithm
• Suppressing the numerical cherenkov instability in FDTD PIC codes
• A spectral, quasi-cylindrical and dispersion-free particle-in-cell algorithm
• Finite grid instability and spectral fidelity of the electrostatic particle-in-cell algorithm
• Controlling the numerical Cerenkov instability in PIC simulations using a customized finite difference Maxwell solver and a local FFT based current correction
• A hybrid nodal-staggered pseudo-spectral electromagnetic particle-in-cell method with finite-order centering
• On the numerical dispersion of electromagnetic particle-in-cell code: finite grid instability
• Integrating a ponderomotive guiding center algorithm into a quasi-static particle-in-cell code based on azimuthal mode decomposition

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