skip to main content
OSTI.GOV title logo U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Title: Comparison of deterministic and stochastic methods for time-dependent Wigner simulations

Journal Article · · Journal of Computational Physics
 [1]
  1. LMAM and School of Mathematical Sciences, Peking University, Beijing 100871 (China)

Recently a Monte Carlo method based on signed particles for time-dependent simulations of the Wigner equation has been proposed. While it has been thoroughly validated against physical benchmarks, no technical study about its numerical accuracy has been performed. To this end, this paper presents the first step towards the construction of firm mathematical foundations for the signed particle Wigner Monte Carlo method. An initial investigation is performed by means of comparisons with a cell average spectral element method, which is a highly accurate deterministic method and utilized to provide reference solutions. Several different numerical tests involving the time-dependent evolution of a quantum wave-packet are performed and discussed in deep details. In particular, this allows us to depict a set of crucial criteria for the signed particle Wigner Monte Carlo method to achieve a satisfactory accuracy.

OSTI ID:
22570184
Journal Information:
Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 300; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2015 Elsevier Science B.V., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, All rights reserved.; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 0021-9991
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English