Mesh-free Hamiltonian implementation of two dimensional Darwin model

Abstract

A new approach to Darwin or magnetoinductive plasma simulation is presented, which combines a mesh-free field solver with a robust time-integration scheme avoiding numerical divergence errors in the solenoidal field components. The mesh-free formulation employs an efficient parallel Barnes-Hut tree algorithm to speed up the computation of fields summed directly from the particles, avoiding the necessity of divergence cleaning procedures typically required by particle-in-cell methods. The time-integration scheme employs a Hamiltonian formulation of the Lorentz force, circumventing the development of violent numerical instabilities associated with time differentiation of the vector potential. It is shown that a semi-implicit scheme converges rapidly and is robust to further numerical instabilities which can develop from a dominant contribution of the vector potential to the canonical momenta. The model is validated by various static and dynamic benchmark tests, including a simulation of the Weibel-like filamentation instability in beam-plasma interactions.