A structure-preserving finite element framework for the Vlasov-Maxwell system

Abstract

We present a stabilized, structure-preserving finite element framework for solving the Vlasov-Maxwell equations. The method uses a tensor product of continuous polynomial spaces for the spatial and velocity domains, respectively, to discretize the Vlasov equation, combined with curl- and divergence-conforming Nédélec and Raviart-Thomas elements for Maxwell's equations on Cartesian grids. A novel, robust, consistent, and high-order accurate residual-based artificial viscosity method is introduced for stabilizing the Vlasov equations. The proposed method is tested on the 1D2V and 2D2V reduced Vlasov-Maxwell system, achieving optimal convergence orders for all polynomial spaces considered in this study. Several challenging benchmarks are solved to validate the effectiveness of the proposed method.