Outflow Boundary Conditions for the Fourier Transformed One-Dimensional Vlasov–Poisson System

Abstract

In order to facilitate numerical simulations of plasma phenomena where kinetic processes are important, we have studied the technique of Fourier transforming the Vlasov equation analytically in the velocity space, and solving the resulting equation numerically. Special attention has been paid to the boundary conditions of the Fourier transformed system. By using outgoing wave boundary conditions in the Fourier transformed space, small-scale information in velocity space is carried outside the computational domain and is lost. Thereby the so-called recurrence phenomenon is reduced. This method is an alternative to using numerical dissipation or smoothing operators in velocity space. Different high-order methods are used for computing derivatives as well as for the time-stepping, leading to an over-all fourth-order method.