Implementation of the two-dimensional electrostatic particle-in-cell method

We provide a guide to implementing the particle-in-cell algorithm, which is useful for simulating diverse phenomena in plasmas. We focus on two-dimensional systems which have vector fields with three Cartesian components but depend only on two spatial coordinates. We describe the algorithm in detail...

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Autores:
Tipo de recurso:
Fecha de publicación:
2020
Institución:
Universidad de Medellín
Repositorio:
Repositorio UDEM
Idioma:
eng
OAI Identifier:
oai:repository.udem.edu.co:11407/5693
Acceso en línea:
http://hdl.handle.net/11407/5693
Palabra clave:
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License
http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec
Description
Summary:We provide a guide to implementing the particle-in-cell algorithm, which is useful for simulating diverse phenomena in plasmas. We focus on two-dimensional systems which have vector fields with three Cartesian components but depend only on two spatial coordinates. We describe the algorithm in detail, including particle-to-grid interpolation, the fast Fourier transform, the Boris algorithm, and the use of dimensionless units. As an example, we discuss a simulation of the two-stream instability, which occurs in a plasma system composed of two counter-streaming electrons and an ion background at rest. © 2020 American Association of Physics Teachers.