Particle simulation of Coulomb collisions: Comparing the methods of Takizuka and Abe and Nanbu

Journal Article · Sun Apr 20 00:00:00 EDT 2008 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2007.12.027· OSTI ID:21159421

Lin, Tungyou; Caflisch, Russel ^[1]; Cohen, Bruce I; Dimits, Andris M ^[2]

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1. Mathematics Department, University of California at Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA 90036 (United States)
2. Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, CA 94550 (United States)

The interactions of charged particles in a plasma are governed by long-range Coulomb collision. We compare two widely used Monte Carlo models for Coulomb collisions. One was developed by Takizuka and Abe in 1977, the other was developed by Nanbu in 1997. We perform deterministic and statistical error analysis with respect to particle number and time step. The two models produce similar stochastic errors, but Nanbu's model gives smaller time step errors. Error comparisons between these two methods are presented.

• OSTI ID: 21159421
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Computational Physics Journal Issue: 9 Vol. 227; ISSN JCTPAH; ISSN 0021-9991
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
CHARGED PARTICLES
COLLISIONS
COMPARATIVE EVALUATIONS
ERRORS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
PLASMA
SIMULATION
STOCHASTIC PROCESSES