Variational framework for structure-preserving electromagnetic particle-in-cell methods

Maxwell equations (35Q61) Vlasov equations (35Q83) de Rham theory in global analysis (58A12) Numerical computation using splines (65D07) Numerical solution of discretized equations for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M22) Finite element, Rayleigh-Ritz and Galerkin methods for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M60) Spectral, collocation and related methods for initial value and initial-boundary value problems involving PDEs (65M70) Numerical methods for discrete and fast Fourier transforms (65T50) Electromagnetic theory (general) (78A25)

Abstract: In this article we apply a discrete action principle for the Vlasov--Maxwell equations in a structure-preserving particle-field discretization framework. In this framework the finite-dimensional electromagnetic potentials and fields are represented in a discrete de Rham sequence involving general finite element spaces, and the particle-field coupling is represented by a set of projection operators that commute with the differential operators. With a minimal number of assumptions which allow for a variety of finite elements and shape functions for the particles, we show that the resulting variational scheme has a general discrete Poisson structure and thus leads to a semi-discrete Hamiltonian system. By introducing discrete interior products we derive a second type of space discretization which is momentum preserving, based on the same finite elements and shape functions. We illustrate our method by applying it to spline finite elements, and to a new spectral discretization where the particle-field coupling relies on discrete Fourier transforms.

Review text

The authors consider the Vlasov equations \(\partial _{t}f_{s}(t,x,v)+v\cdot \nabla _{x}f_{s}(t,x,v)+\frac{q_{s}}{m_{s}}(E(t,x)+v\times B(t,x))\cdot \nabla _{v}f_{s}(t,x,v)=0\), where \(f_{s}\) is the distribution function, \( m_{s}\) the mass and \(q_{s}\) the charge of the particle species \(s\). The electric and magnetic fields are solutions of the Maxwell's equations \( \partial _{t}E(t,x)=\mathrm{curl}\ B(t,x)-J(t,x)\), \(\partial _{t}B(t,x)=- \mathrm{curl}\ E(t,x)\), \(\mathrm{div}\ E(t,x)=\rho (t,x)\), \(\mathrm{div}\ B(t,x)=0\), the charge and current densities being respectively defined as \(\rho (t,x)=\sum_{s}q_{s}\int_{ \mathbb{R}^{3}}f_{s}(t,x,v)dv\), \(J(t,x)=\sum_{s}q_{s}\int_{\mathbb{R} ^{3}}vf_{s}(t,x,v)dv\). The authors introduce the characteristics trajectories solutions of \(\frac{d}{dt}X(t)=V(t)\), \(\frac{d}{dt}V(t)=\frac{ q_{s}}{m_{s}}(E(t,X(t))+V(t)\times B(t,X(t)))\). They then introduce the de Rham sequence \(H^{1}(\mathbb{R}^{3})\overset{\mathrm{grad}}{\rightarrow}H(\mathrm{curl};\mathbb{R}^{3})\overset{\mathrm{curl}}{\rightarrow }H(\mathrm{div}; \mathbb{R}^{3})\overset{\mathrm{div}}{\rightarrow }L^{2}(\mathbb{R}^{3})\) that they generalize with spaces \(V^{0},V^{1},V^{3}\), and they build a diagram introducing operators \(\Pi ^{i}\) from the infinite-dimensional spaces \(V^{l}\) into the discrete ones \(V_{h}^{l}\). They suppose that this diagram commutes and that the spaces \(V^{l}\) are translation invariant function or distribution spaces. They define the notion of admissible shape function. They consider Low's Lagrangian functional \(\mathcal{L}=\sum_{s}\int_{\Omega \times \mathbb{R} ^{3}}f_{s}(t_{0},z_{0})((m_{s}V+q_{s}A(t,X))\cdot X^{\prime }-(\frac{m_{s}}{2 }V^{2}+q_{s}\phi (t,X))dz_{0}+\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega }\left\vert \mathrm{grad}\ \phi (t,x)+A^{\prime }(t,x)\right\vert ^{2}dx-\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega }\left\vert \mathrm{curl}\ A(t,x)\right\vert ^{2}dx\) and its discrete version \( \mathcal{L}_{h}=\sum_{p=1}^{N}w_{p}((m_{s}V_{p}+q_{s}A^{S}(X_{p}))\cdot X_{p}^{\prime }-(\frac{m_{s}}{2}V_{p}^{2}+q_{s}\phi ^{S}(X_{p}))+\frac{1}{2} \int_{\Omega }\left\vert \mathrm{grad}_{w}\phi _{h}(x)+A_{h}^{\prime }(x)\right\vert ^{2}dx-\frac{1}{2}\int_{\Omega }\left\vert \mathrm{curl} _{w}A_{h}(x)\right\vert ^{2}dx\), for discrete variables \(X_{p},X_{p}^{\prime },V_{p}\), which are collections of trajectories and \(A_{h},A_{h}^{\prime }\in V_{h}^{2}\), \(\phi _{h}\in V_{h}^{3}\). The discrete action functional is defined as \(\mathcal{S}_{h}(X_{N},V_{N},\phi _{h},A_{h})=\int_{0}^{T} \mathcal{L}_{h}(X_{N},\frac{d}{dt}X_{N},V_{N},\phi _{h},A_{h},\partial _{t}A_{h})dt\). The authors then derive discrete Ampère and Faraday equations, completed with two discrete Gauss laws, and they build a discrete Hamiltonian and a discrete bracket which is proved to be a non-canonical Poisson bracket. The discrete Ampère and Faraday equations are proved to be a Poisson system and to preserve the discrete Hamiltonian and the variational Gauss laws. Because this scheme is not momentum-preserving, the authors introduce a modified scheme. Coming back to the above scheme and the Ampère and Faraday equations, the authors deduce a system of ordinary differential equations. In the last parts of their paper, the authors focus on a special case considering B-splines and they present results of numerical simulations.

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