1. Small-angle Coulomb collision model for particle-in-cell simulations
- Author
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Lemons, Don S., Winske, Dan, Daughton, William, and Albright, Brian
- Subjects
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STOCHASTIC difference equations , *PARTIAL differential equations , *SIMULATION methods & models , *COULOMB functions , *PARTICLE methods (Numerical analysis) , *CONSERVATION laws (Physics) , *SCATTERING (Physics) , *COLLISIONS (Nuclear physics) - Abstract
Abstract: We construct and investigate a set of stochastic differential equations that incorporate the physics of velocity-dependent small-angle Coulomb collisions among the plasma particles in a particle-in-cell simulation. Each particle is scattered stochastically from all the other particles in a simulation cell modeled as one or more Maxwellians. Total energy and momentum are conserved by linear transformation of the velocity increments. In two test simulations the proposed “particle-moment” collision algorithm performs well with time steps as large as 10% of the relaxation time – far larger than a particle-pairing collision algorithm, in which pairs of particles are scattered from one another, requires to achieve the same accuracy. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]
- Published
- 2009
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