Elimination of Numerical Cherenkov Instability in flowing-plasma Particle-In-Cell simulations by using Galilean coordinates

Abstract

Particle-In-Cell (PIC) simulations of relativistic flowing plasmas are of key interest to several fields of physics (including e.g. laser-wakefield acceleration, when viewed in a Lorentz-boosted frame), but remain sometimes infeasible due to the well-known numerical Cherenkov instability (NCI). In this article, we show that, for a plasma drifting at a uniform relativistic velocity, the NCI can be eliminated by simply integrating the PIC equations in Galilean coordinates that follow the plasma (also sometimes known as comoving coordinates) within a spectral analytical framework. The elimination of the NCI is verified empirically and confirmed by a theoretical analysis of the instability. Moreover, it is shown that this method is applicable both to Cartesian geometry and to cylindrical geometry with azimuthal Fourier decomposition.

arXiv comment18 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (18)

• Particle acceleration in relativistic collisionless shocks: Fermi process at last?
• Interpenetrating plasma shells: near-equipartition magnetic field generation and non-thermal particle acceleration
• A spectral, quasi-cylindrical and dispersion-free Particle-In-Cell algorithm
• Ion dynamics and acceleration in relativistic shocks
• Magnetic field evolution in relativistic unmagnetized collisionless shocks
• Numerical stability of relativistic beam multidimensional PIC simulations employing the Esirkepov algorithm
• Implementation of a hybrid particle code with a PIC description in r-z and a gridless description in $\varphi$ into OSIRIS
• Numerical instability due to relativistic plasma drift in EM-PIC simulations
• Suppressing the Numerical Cherenkov Instability in FDTD PIC Codes
• Detailed analysis of the effects of stencil spatial variations with arbitrary high-order finite-difference Maxwell solver
• Numerical stability analysis of the Pseudo-Spectral Analytical Time-Domain PIC algorithm
• Stable discrete representation of relativistically drifting plasmas
• Improved Numerical Cherenkov Instability Suppression in the Generalized PSTD PIC Algorithm
• Elimination of the numerical Cerenkov instability for spectral EM-PIC codes
• Mitigation of numerical Cerenkov radiation and instability using a hybrid finite difference-FFT Maxwell solver and a local charge conserving current deposit
• Numerical Stability Improvements for the Pseudo-Spectral EM PIC Algorithm
• Laser-plasma interactions with a Fourier-Bessel Particle-in-Cell method
• Modeling laser wakefield accelerators in a Lorentz boosted frame

Cited by in corpus (16)

• Physics of nanocoulomb-class electron beams in laser-plasma wakefields
• PIC Simulation Methods for Cosmic Radiation and Plasma Instabilities
• Accurate modeling of plasma acceleration with arbitrary order pseudo-spectral particle-in-cell methods
• LUX -- A Laser-Plasma Driven Undulator Beamline
• X-Dispersionless Maxwell solver for plasma-based particle acceleration
• On numerical errors to the fields surrounding a relativistically moving particle in PIC codes
• Energy Compression and Stabilization of Laser-Plasma Accelerators
• Relativistic Shear Flow Between Electron-Ion and Electron-Positron Plasmas and Astrophysical Applications
• Efficient start-to-end 3D envelope modeling for two-stage laser wakefield acceleration experiments
• On the generation of ultra-bright and low energy spread electron beams in laser wakefield acceleration in a uniform plasma
• First direct observation of a wakefield generated with structured light
• Overcoming timestep limitations in boosted-frame Particle-In-Cell simulations of plasma-based acceleration
• Accelerating Particle-in-Cell Kinetic Plasma Simulations via Reduced-Order Modeling of Space-Charge Dynamics using Dynamic Mode Decomposition
• First Electron Acceleration in a Tunable-Velocity Laser Wakefield
• A Hybrid Nodal-Staggered Pseudo-Spectral Electromagnetic Particle-In-Cell Method with Finite-Order Centering
• Modeling of Advanced Accelerator Concepts