TITLE:
Plasma Simulation beyond Rigid-Macroparticle Approximation
AUTHORS:
Hai Lin, Chengpu Liu
KEYWORDS:
Particle Beam, Plasma, Rigid-Macroparticle Approximation, Self-Consistent Field, Simulation, Vlasov-Maxwell System
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Modern Physics,
Vol.9 No.5,
April
9,
2018
ABSTRACT: Current mainstream method of simulating plasma is based on rigid-macroparticle approximation in which many realistic particles are merged, according to their initial space positions regardless of their initial velocities, into a macroparticle, and do a global motion. This is a distorted picture because what each macroparticle do is to break into, because of differences among velocities of contained realistic particles, pieces with different destinations at next time point, rather than a global moving to a destination at next time point. Therefore, the scientific validity of results obtained from such an approximation cannot be warranted. Here, we propose a solution to this problem. It can fundamentally warrant exact solutions of plasma self-consistent fields and hence those of microscopic distribution function.