Multiscale Particle-in-Cell methods and comparisons for the long-time two-dimensional Vlasov–Poisson equation with strong magnetic field

Abstract

We applied different kinds of multiscale methods to numerically study the long-time Vlasov–Poisson equation with a strong magnetic field. The multiscale methods include an asymptotic preserving Runge–Kutta scheme, an exponential time differencing scheme, stroboscopic averaging method and a uniformly accurate two-scale formulation. We briefly review these methods and then adapt them to solve the Vlasov–Poisson equation under a Particle-in-Cell discretization. Extensive numerical experiments are conducted to investigate and compare the accuracy, efficiency, and long-time behavior of all the methods. The methods with the best performance under different parameter regimes are identified.