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Irene M. Gamba

Publications and source records attributed to Irene M. Gamba.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources
arXiv2016

Numerical algorithms based on Galerkin methods for the modeling of reactive interfaces in photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cells

This work concerns the numerical solution of a coupled system of self-consistent reaction-drift-diffusion-Poisson equations that describes the macroscopic dynamics of charge transport in photoelectrochemical (PEC) solar cells with reactive semiconductor and electrolyte interfaces. We present three numerical algorithms, mainly based on a mixed finite element and a local discontinuous Galerkin method for spatial discretization, with carefully chosen numerical fluxes, and implicit-explicit time stepping techniques, for solving the time-dependent nonlinear systems of partial differential equations. We perform computational simulations under various model parameters to demonstrate the performance of the proposed numerical algorithms as well as the impact of these parameters on the solution to the model.

math.NA↗
arXiv2016

Global weak solutions for Kolmogorov-Vicsek type equations with orientational interactions

We study the global existence and uniqueness of weak solutions to kinetic Kolmogorov-Vicsek models that can be considered a non-local non-linear Fokker-Planck type equation describing the dynamics of individuals with orientational interactions. This model is derived from the discrete Couzin-Vicsek algorithm as mean-field limit \cite{B-C-C,D-M}, which governs the interactions of stochastic agents moving with a velocity of constant magnitude, i.e. the the corresponding velocity space for these type of Kolmogorov-Vicsek models are the unit sphere. Our analysis for $L^p$ estimates and compactness properties take advantage of the orientational interaction property meaning that the velocity space is a compact manifold.

math.AP↗
arXiv2015

On the modeling and simulation of reaction-transfer dynamics in semiconductor-electrolyte solar cells

The mathematical modeling and numerical simulation of semiconductor-electrolyte systems play important roles in the design of high-performance semiconductor-liquid junction solar cells. In this work, we propose a macroscopic mathematical model, a system of nonlinear partial differential equations, for the complete description of charge transfer dynamics in such systems. The model consists of a reaction-drift-diffusion-Poisson system that models the transport of electrons and holes in the semiconductor region and an equivalent system that describes the transport of reductants and oxidants, as well as other charged species, in the electrolyte region. The coupling between the semiconductor and the electrolyte is modeled through a set of interfacial reaction and current balance conditions. We present some numerical simulations to illustrate the quantitative behavior of the semiconductor-electrolyte system in both dark and illuminated environments. We show numerically that one can replace the electrolyte region in the system with a Schottky contact only when the bulk reductant-oxidant pair density is extremely high. Otherwise, such replacement gives significantly inaccurate description of the real dynamics of the semiconductor-electrolyte system.

math.AP↗
arXiv2014

A fast approach to Discontinuous Galerkin solvers for Boltzmann-Poisson transport systems for full electronic bands and phonon scattering

The present work is motivated by the development of a fast DG based deterministic solver for the extension of the BTE to a system of transport Boltzmann equations for full electronic multi-band transport with intra-band scattering mechanisms. Our proposed method allows to find scattering effects of high complexity, such as anisotropic electronic bands or full band computations, by simply using the standard routines of a suitable Monte Carlo approach only once. In this short paper, we restrict our presentation to the single band problem as it will be also valid in the multi-band system as well. We present preliminary numerical tests of this method using the Kane energy band model, for a 1-D 400nm $n^{+}-n-n^{+}$ silicon channel diode, showing moments at $t=0.5$ps and $t=3.0$ps.

math.NA↗
arXiv2014

Boundary conditions effects by Discontinuous Galerkin solvers for Boltzmann-Poisson models of electron transport

In this paper we perform, by means of Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) Finite Element Method (FEM) based numerical solvers for Boltzmann-Poisson (BP) semiclassical models of hot electronic transport in semiconductors, a numerical study of reflective boundary conditions in the BP system, such as specular reflection, diffusive reflection, and a mixed convex combination of these reflections, and their effect on the behavior of the solution. A boundary layer effect is observed in our numerical simulations for the kinetic moments related to diffusive and mixed reflection.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗
arXiv2014

Global Solutions of the Boltzmann Equation over $\mathbb{R}^D$ near Global Maxwellians with Small Mass

We study the dynamics defined by the Boltzmann equation set in the Euclidean space $\mathbb{R}^D$ in the vicinity of global Maxwellians with finite mass. A global Maxwellian is a special solution of the Boltzmann equation for which the collision integral vanishes identically. In this setting, the dispersion due to the advection operator quenches the dissipative effect of the Boltzmann collision integral. As a result, the large time limit of solutions of the Boltzmann equation in this regime is given by noninteracting, freely transported states and can be described with the tools of scattering theory.

math.AP↗
arXiv2014

A conservative spectral method for the Boltzmann equation with anisotropic scattering and the grazing collisions limit

We present the formulation of a conservative spectral scheme for Boltzmann collision operators with anisotropic scattering mechanisms to model grazing collision limit regimes approximating the solution to the Landau equation in space homogeneous setting. The scheme is based on the conservative spectral method of Gamba and Tharkabhushanam [17, 18]. This formulation is derived from the weak form of the Boltzmann equation, which can represent the collisional term as a weighted convolution in Fourier space. Within this framework, we also study the rate of convergence of the Fourier transform for the Boltzmann collision operator in the grazing collisions limit to the Fourier transform for the Landau collision operator for a family of non-integrable angular scattering cross sections. We analytically show that the decay rate to equilibrium depends on the parameters associated with the collision cross section, and specifically study numerically the differences between the classical Rutherford scattering angular cross section, which has logarithmic error in approximating Landau, and an artificial cross section with a linear error.

math.NA↗
arXiv2013

Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for the Vlasov-Maxwell Equations

Discontinuous Galerkin methods are developed for solving the Vlasov-Maxwell system, methods that are designed to be systematically as accurate as one wants with provable conservation of mass and possibly total energy. Such properties in general are hard to achieve within other numerical method frameworks for simulating the Vlasov-Maxwell system. The proposed scheme employs discontinuous Galerkin discretizations for both the Vlasov and the Maxwell equations, resulting in a consistent description of the distribution function and electromagnetic fields. It is proven, up to some boundary effects, that charge is conserved and the total energy can be preserved with suitable choices of the numerical flux for the Maxwell equations and the underlying approximation spaces. Error estimates are established for several flux choices. The scheme is tested on the streaming Weibel instability: the order of accuracy and conservation properties of the proposed method are verified.

math.NA↗
arXiv2013

A Spectral-Lagrangian Boltzmann Solver for a Multi-Energy Level Gas

In this paper a spectral-Lagrangian method for the Boltzmann equation for a multi-energy level gas is proposed. Internal energy levels are treated as separate species and inelastic collisions (leading to internal energy excitation and relaxation) are accounted for. The formulation developed can also be used for the case of a mixture of monatomic gases without internal energy (where only elastic collisions occur). The advantage of the spectral-Lagrangian method lies in the generality of the algorithm in use for the evaluation of the elastic and inelastic collision operators. The computational procedure is based on the Fourier transform of the partial elastic and inelastic collision operators and exploits the fact that these can be written as weighted convolutions in Fourier space with no restriction on the cross- section model. The conservation of mass, momentum and energy during collisions is enforced through the solution of constrained optimization problems. Numerical solutions are obtained for both space homogeneous and space in- homogeneous problems. Computational results are compared with those obtained by means of the DSMC method in order to assess the accuracy of the proposed spectral-Lagrangian method.

math.NA↗
arXiv2012

Study of conservation and recurrence of Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin schemes for Vlasov-Poisson systems

In this paper we consider Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) schemes for Vlasov-Poisson systems that model collisionless plasmas. One-dimensional systems are emphasized. The RKDG method, originally devised to solve conservation laws, is seen to have excellent conservation properties, be readily designed for arbitrary order of accuracy, and capable of being used with a positivity-preserving limiter that guarantees positivity of the distribution functions. The RKDG solver for the Vlasov equation is the main focus, while the electric field is obtained through the classical representation by Green's function for the Poisson equation. A rigorous study of recurrence of the DG methods is presented by Fourier analysis, and the impact of different polynomial spaces and the positivity-preserving limiters on the quality of the solutions is ascertained. Several benchmark test problems, such as Landau damping, two-stream instability and the KEEN (Kinetic Electrostatic Electron Nonlinear) wave, are given.

math.NA↗
arXiv2012

Conservative Deterministic Spectral Boltzmann Solver Near the Grazing Collisions Limit

We present new results building on the conservative deterministic spectral method for the space homogeneous Boltzmann equation developed by Gamba and Tharkabhushaman. This approach is a two-step process that acts on the weak form of the Boltzmann equation, and uses the machinery of the Fourier transform to reformulate the collisional integral into a weighted convolution in Fourier space. A constrained optimization problem is solved to preserve the mass, momentum, and energy of the resulting distribution. Within this framework we have extended the formulation to the case of more general case of collision operators with anisotropic scattering mechanisms, which requires a new formulation of the convolution weights. We also derive the grazing collisions limit for the method, and show that it is consistent with the Fokker-Planck-Landau equations as the grazing collisions parameter goes to zero.

math.NA↗
arXiv2012

High Performance Computing with a Conservative Spectral Boltzmann Solver

We present new results building on the conservative deterministic spectral method for the space inhomogeneous Boltzmann equation developed by Gamba and Tharkabhushaman. This approach is a two-step process that acts on the weak form of the Boltzmann equation, and uses the machinery of the Fourier transform to reformulate the collisional integral into a weighted convolution in Fourier space. A constrained optimization problem is solved to preserve the mass, momentum, and energy of the resulting distribution. We extend this method to second order accuracy in space and time, and explore how to leverage the structure of the collisional formulation for high performance computing environments. The locality in space of the collisional term provides a straightforward memory decomposition, and we perform some initial scaling tests on high performance computing resources. We also use the improved computational power of this method to investigate a boundary-layer generated shock problem that cannot be described by classical hydrodynamics.

math.NA↗
arXiv2012

Impact of strong magnetic fields on collision mechanism for transport of charged particles

One of the main applications in plasma physics concerns the energy production through thermo-nuclear fusion. The controlled fusion is achieved by magnetic confinement i.e., the plasma is confined into a toroidal domain (tokamak) under the action of huge magnetic fields. Several models exist for describing the evolution of strongly magnetized plasmas, most of them by neglecting the collisions between particles. The subject matter of this paper is to investigate the effect of large magnetic fields with respect to a collision mechanism. We consider here linear collision Boltzmann operators and derive, by averaging with respect to the fast cyclotronic motion due to strong magnetic forces, their effective collision kernels.

math.AP↗
arXiv2012

The Wigner-Fokker-Planck equation: Stationary states and large-time behavior

We consider the linear Wigner-Fokker-Planck equation subject to confining potentials which are smooth perturbations of the harmonic oscillator potential. For a certain class of perturbations we prove that the equation admits a unique stationary solution in a weighted Sobolev space. A key ingredient of the proof is a new result on the existence of spectral gaps for Fokker-Planck type operators in certain weighted $L^2$-spaces. In addition we show that the steady state corresponds to a positive density matrix operator with unit trace and that the solutions of the time-dependent problem converge towards the steady state with an exponential rate.

math.AP↗
arXiv2010

Convolution inequalities for the Boltzmann collision operator

We study integrability properties of a general version of the Boltzmann collision operator for hard and soft potentials in $n$-dimensions. A reformulation of the collisional integrals allows us to write the weak form of the collision operator as a weighted convolution, where the weight is given by an operator invariant under rotations. Using a symmetrization technique in $L^p$ we prove a Young's inequality for hard potentials, which is sharp for Maxwell molecules in the $L^2$ case. Further, we find a new Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev type of inequality for Boltzmann collision integrals with soft potentials. The same method extends to radially symmetric, non-increasing potentials that lie in some $L^{s}_{weak}$ or $L^{s}$. The method we use resembles a Brascamp, Lieb and Luttinger approach for multilinear weighted convolution inequalities and follows a weak formulation setting. Consequently, it is closely connected to the classical analysis of Young and Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequalities. In all cases, the inequality constants are explicitly given by formulas depending on integrability conditions of the angular cross section (in the spirit of Grad cut-off). As an additional application of the technique we also obtain estimates with exponential weights for hard potentials in both conservative and dissipative interactions.

math.AP↗
arXiv2010

Distributional and classical solutions to the Cauchy Boltzmann problem for soft potentials with integrable angular cross section

This paper focuses on the study of existence and uniqueness of distributional and classical solutions to the Cauchy Boltzmann problem for the soft potential case assuming $S^{n-1}$ integrability of the angular part of the collision kernel (Grad cut-off assumption). For this purpose we revisit the Kaniel--Shinbrot iteration technique to present an elementary proof of existence and uniqueness results that includes large data near a local Maxwellian regime with possibly infinite initial mass. We study the propagation of regularity using a recent estimate for the positive collision operator given in [3], by E. Carneiro and the authors, that permits to study such propagation without additional conditions on the collision kernel. Finally, an $L^{p}$-stability result (with $1\leq p\leq\infty$) is presented assuming the aforementioned condition.

math-ph↗
arXiv2009

A discontinuous Galerkin solver for Boltzmann Poisson systems in nano devices

In this paper, we present results of a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme applied to deterministic computations of the transients for the Boltzmann-Poisson system describing electron transport in semiconductor devices. The collisional term models optical-phonon interactions which become dominant under strong energetic conditions corresponding to nano-scale active regions under applied bias. The proposed numerical technique is a finite element method using discontinuous piecewise polynomials as basis functions on unstructured meshes. It is applied to simulate hot electron transport in bulk silicon, in a silicon $n^+$-$n$-$n^+$ diode and in a double gated 12nm MOSFET. Additionally, the obtained results are compared to those of a high order WENO scheme simulation and DSMC (Discrete Simulation Monte Carlo) solvers.

math.NA↗