Aachen PK 2003 – scientific programme

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P: Plasmaphysik

P 17: Poster III

P 17.6: Poster

Thursday, March 20, 2003, 17:30–19:15, Foyer

Two Dimensional Vlasov–Darwin Simulation — •Holger Schmitz and Rainer Grauer — Theoretische Physik I, Ruhr–Universität Bochum

Many small scale non–equilibrium processes have to be described kinetically. In a collisionless plasma Vlasov’s equation describes the evolution of the particle distribution functions. In other than the most simple cases however Vlasov’s equation cannot be solved analytically. For this reason it is an ongoing task to tackle the equation with numerical simulations. In so called Vlasov simulations the distribution function f(x, v) is given on a n+k–dimensional grid, where n is the number of spatial and k is the number of velocity coordinates. Vlasov’s equation is then used directly to advance the distribution function. In electrodynamic simulations the Friedrich-Levy criterion dictates a maximum time step as to resolve the speed of light c on the spatial grid. Since electromagnetic wave modes in a lot of problems don’t contribute to the physical effects we use the Darwin approximation of Maxwell’s equations. This eliminates the electromagnetic wave modes and ths also the need to resolve c. This greatly increases the computational speed. First results of a 2x3v–dimensional Vlasov–Darwin simulation are presentet.