Dynamical low-rank approximation of the Vlasov–Poisson equation with piecewise linear spatial boundary

Abstract

Dynamical low-rank approximation (DLRA) for the numerical simulation of Vlasov–Poisson equations is based on separation of space and velocity variables, as proposed in several recent works. The standard approach for the time integration in the DLRA model uses a splitting of the tangent space projector for the low-rank manifold according to the separated variables. It can also be modified to allow for rank-adaptivity. A less studied aspect is the incorporation of boundary conditions in the DLRA model. In this work, a variational formulation of the projector splitting is proposed which allows to handle inflow boundary conditions on spatial domains with piecewise linear boundary. Numerical experiments demonstrate the principle feasibility of this approach.