Nonlinear PIC Simulation in a Penning Trap

Abstract

We study the nonlinear dynamics of a Penning trap plasma, including the effect of the finite length and end curvature of the plasma column. A new cylindrical PIC code, called KANDINSKY, has been implemented by using a new interpolation scheme. The principal idea is to calculate the volume of each cell from a particle volume, in the same manner as it is done for the cell charge. With this new method, the density is conserved along streamlines and artificial sources of compressibility are avoided. The code has been validated with a reference Eulerian fluid code. We compare the dynamics of three different models: a model with compression effects, the standard Euler model and a geophysical fluid dynamics model. The results of our investigation prove that Penning traps can really be used to simulate geophysical fluids.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jun 24, 2002
Accession Number
ADP012548

Entities

People

  • G. L. Delzanno
  • Giovanni Lapenta
  • J. M. Finn

Organizations

  • Los Alamos National Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Angular Momentum
  • Compression
  • Computational Fluid Dynamics
  • Computational Science
  • Curvature
  • Differential Equations
  • Dynamics
  • Electron Density
  • Electrons
  • Equations
  • Fluid Dynamics
  • High Density
  • Ion Traps
  • Particles
  • Poisson Equation
  • Simulations
  • Stratified Fluids

Fields of Study

  • Physics

Readers

  • Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)
  • Plasma Physics.