Local energy conservation law for a spatially-discretized Hamiltonian Vlasov-Maxwell system

Abstract

Because of the unparalleled long-term conservative property, the structure-preserving geometric algorithm for the Vlasov-Maxwell (VM) equations is currently an active research topic. We show that spatially discretized Hamiltonian systems for the VM equations admit a local energy conservation law in space-time. This is accomplished by proving that a sum-free and only locally non-zero scalar field can always be written as the divergence of a vector field that is only locally non-zero. The result demonstrates that the Hamiltonian discretization of Vlasov-Maxwell system can preserve local conservation laws, in addition to the symplectic structure, both of which are the intrinsic physical properties of infinite dimensional Hamiltonian systems in physics.