Monte Carlo simulation of excitation and ionization collisions with complexity reduction

Journal Article · Sun Oct 01 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Journal of Computational Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JCP.2017.06.029· OSTI ID:22701609

Yan, Bokai; Caflisch, Russel E. ^[1]; Cambier, Jean-Luc ^[2]

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1. Mathematics Department, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90036 (United States)
2. Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Arlington, VA 22203 (United States)

Kinetic simulation of plasmas with detailed excitation and ionization collisions presents a significant computational challenge due to the multiscale feature of the collisional rates. In the present work, we propose a complexity reduction method based on atomic level grouping for modeling excitation and ionization collisions. High order of accuracy of the reduction method is realized by allowing an internal distribution within each group. We apply the reduction method to the standard Monte Carlo collision algorithm to model an atomic Hydrogen plasma. Numerical results suggest that the stiffness of the collisional kinetics can be significantly reduced with minimal loss in accuracy.

• OSTI ID: 22701609
• Journal Information: Journal of Computational Physics, Vol. 346; Other Information: Copyright (c) 2017 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

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
BOLTZMANN EQUATION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
DE-EXCITATION
EXCITATION
H THEOREM
ION COLLISIONS
MONTE CARLO METHOD
REDUCTION