Multiple-scale kinetic simulations with the energy conserving semi-implicit particle in cell method

Abstract

The recently developed energy conserving semi-implicit method (ECsim) for particle-in-cell (PIC) simulation is applied to multiple-scale problems where the electron-scale physics needs to be only partially retained and the interest is on the macroscopic or ion-scale processes. Unlike hybrid methods, the ECsim is capable of providing kinetic electron information, such as wave–electron interaction (Landau damping or cyclotron resonance) and non-Maxwellian electron velocity distributions. However, like hybrid methods, the ECsim does not need to resolve all electron scales, allowing time steps and grid spacings orders of magnitude larger than in explicit PIC schemes. The additional advantage of the ECsim is that the stability at large scale is obtained while conserving energy exactly. Three examples are presented: ion acoustic waves, electron acoustic instability and reconnection processes.