Structure-preserving marker-particle discretizations of Coulomb collisions for particle-in-cell codes

Eero Hirvijoki

doi:10.1088/1361-6587/abe884

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arXiv · 2012.07187

Structure-preserving marker-particle discretizations of Coulomb collisions for particle-in-cell codes

Eero Hirvijoki

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Abstract

This paper contributes new insights into discretizing Coulomb collisions in kinetic plasma models. Building on the previous works [Carrillo et al. J. Comp. Phys. X 7:100066 (2020), Hirvijoki and Burby Phys. Plasmas 27(8):082307 (2020)], I propose deterministic discrete-time energy- and positivity-preserving, entropy-dissipating marker-particle schemes for the standard Landau collision operator and the electrostatic gyrokinetic Landau operator. In case of the standard Landau operator, the scheme preserves also the discrete-time kinetic momentum. The improvements, the extensions of the structure-preserving discretizations in [Carrillo et al. J. Comp. Phys. X 7:100066 (2020), Hirvijoki and Burby Phys. Plasmas 27(8):082307 (2020)] to discrete time, are made possible by exploiting the underlying metriplectic structure of the collision operators involved and the so-called discrete-gradient integrators.

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Eero Hirvijoki. 2020-12-14. Structure-preserving marker-particle discretizations of Coulomb collisions for particle-in-cell codes. https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6587/abe884

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