The Vlasov-Poisson equations describe the evolution of a collisionless plasma, represented through a probability density function (PDF) that self-interacts via an electrostatic force. One of the main difficulties in numerically solving this system is the severe time-step restriction that arises from parts of the PDF associated with moderate-to-large velocities. The dominant approach in the plasma physics community for removing these time-step restrictions is the so-called particle-in-cell (PIC) method, which discretizes the distribution function into a set of macro-particles, while the electric field is represented on a mesh. Several alternatives to this approach exist, including fully Lagrangian, fully Eulerian, and so-called semi-Lagrangian methods. The focus of this work is the semiLagrangian approach, which begins with a grid-based Eulerian representation of both the PDF and the electric field, then evolves the PDF via Lagrangian dynamics, and finally projects this evolved field back onto the original Eulerian mesh. In particular, we develop in this work a method that discretizes the 1+1 Vlasov-Poisson system via a high-order discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method in phase space, and an operator split, semi-Lagrangian method in time. Secondorder accuracy in time is relatively easy to achieve via Strang operator splitting. With additional work, using higher-order splitting and a higher-order method of characteristics, we also demonstrate how to push this scheme to fourth-order accuracy in time. We show how to resolve all of the Lagrangian dynamics in such a way that mass is exactly conserved, positivity is maintained, and highorder accuracy is achieved. The Poisson equation is solved to high-order via the smallest stencil local discontinuous Galerkin (LDG) approach. We test the proposed scheme on several standard test cases.
a b s t r a c tNumerical methods for solving the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations in more than one space dimension must either confront the challenge of controlling errors in the discrete divergence of the magnetic field, or else be faced with nonlinear numerical instabilities. One approach for controlling the discrete divergence is through a so-called constrained transport method, which is based on first predicting a magnetic field through a standard finite volume solver, and then correcting this field through the appropriate use of a magnetic vector potential. In this work we develop a constrained transport method for the 3D ideal MHD equations that is based on a high-resolution wave propagation scheme. Our proposed scheme is the 3D extension of the 2D scheme developed by Rossmanith [J.A. Rossmanith, An unstaggered, high-resolution constrained transport method for magnetohydrodynamic flows, SIAM J. Sci. Comput. 28 (2006) 1766], and is based on the high-resolution wave propagation method of Langseth and LeVeque [J.O. Langseth, R.J. LeVeque, A wave propagation method for threedimensional hyperbolic conservation laws, J. Comput. Phys. 165 (2000) 126]. In particular, in our extension we take great care to maintain the three most important properties of the 2D scheme: (1) all quantities, including all components of the magnetic field and magnetic potential, are treated as cell-centered; (2) we develop a high-resolution wave propagation scheme for evolving the magnetic potential; and (3) we develop a wave limiting approach that is applied during the vector potential evolution, which controls unphysical oscillations in the magnetic field. One of the key numerical difficulties that is novel to 3D is that the transport equation that must be solved for the magnetic vector potential is only weakly hyperbolic. In presenting our numerical algorithm we describe how to numerically handle this problem of weak hyperbolicity, as well as how to choose an appropriate gauge condition. The resulting scheme is applied to several numerical test cases.
In this work we develop a class of high-order finite difference weighted essentially non-oscillatory (FD-WENO) schemes for solving the ideal magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equations in 2D and 3D. The philosophy of this work is to use efficient high-order WENO spatial discretizations with high-order strong stability-preserving Runge-Kutta (SSP-RK) time-stepping schemes. Numerical results have shown that with such methods we are able to resolve solution structures that are only visible at much higher grid resolutions with lower-order schemes. The key challenge in applying such methods to ideal MHD is to control divergence errors in the magnetic field. We achieve this by augmenting the base scheme with a novel high-order constrained transport approach that updates the magnetic vector potential. The predicted magnetic field from the base scheme is replaced by a divergence-free magnetic field that is obtained from the curl of this magnetic potential. The non-conservative weakly hyperbolic system that the magnetic vector potential satisfies is solved using a version of FD-WENO developed for Hamilton-Jacobi equations. The resulting numerical method is endowed with several important properties: (1) all quantities, including all components of the magnetic field and magnetic potential, are treated as point values on the same mesh (i.e., there is no mesh staggering); (2) both the spatial and temporal orders of accuracy are fourth-order; (3) no spatial integration or multidimensional reconstructions are needed in any step; and (4) special limiters in the magnetic vector potential update are used to control unphysical oscillations in the magnetic field. Several 2D and 3D numerical examples are presented to verify the order of accuracy on smooth test problems and to show high-resolution on test problems that involve shocks.
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