Numerical Simulation of Plasmas with Periodic Smoothing in Phase Space.

Abstract

The paper presents a hybrid method of numerical simulation of collisionless plasmas in which weighted particles are advanced as i particle simulations, but in which the distribution function is reconstructed periodically by a local averaging operation as in numerical solutions of the Vlasov equation. The rates of diffusion resulting from repeated averaging of the distribution function are estimated. These rates indicate that it is possible to minimize the effects of both beaming instabilities and diffusion by properly choosing the frequency of reconstruction of the distribution function. A computer code was written to implement this method and numerical solutions of two-stream instability problems are presented. (Author)

Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
May 01, 1971
Accession Number
AD0726184

Entities

People

  • Jacques Denavit

Organizations

  • United States Naval Research Laboratory

Tags

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Computers
  • Control Simulators
  • Diffusion
  • Distribution Functions
  • Equations
  • Frequency
  • Instability
  • Particles
  • Simulations
  • Simulators

Fields of Study

  • Mathematics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Operations Research
  • Plasma Physics / Magnetohydrodynamics

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster