Abstract
The Particle-In-Cell (PIC) method has been developed by Oscar Buneman, Charles Birdsall, Roger W. Hockney, and John Dawson in the 1950s and, with the advances of computing power, has been further developed for several fields such as astrophysical, magnetospheric as well as solar plasmas and recently also for atmospheric and laser-plasma physics. Currently more than 15 semi-public PIC codes are available which we discuss in this review. Its applications have grown extensively with increasing computing power available on high performance computing facilities around the world. These systems allow the study of various topics of astrophysical plasmas, such as magnetic reconnection, pulsars and black hole magnetosphere, non-relativistic and relativistic shocks, relativistic jets, and laser-plasma physics. We review a plethora of astrophysical phenomena such as relativistic jets, instabilities, magnetic reconnection, pulsars, as well as PIC simulations of laser-plasma physics (until 2021) emphasizing the physics involved in the simulations. Finally, we give an outlook of the future simulations of jets associated to neutron stars, black holes and their merging and discuss the future of PIC simulations in the light of petascale and exascale computing.
Highlights
Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, and ubiquitous in the universe
We review a plethora of astrophysical phenomena such as relativistic jets, instabilities, magnetic reconnection, pulsars, as well as PIC simulations of laser-plasma physics emphasizing the physics involved in the simulations
We have described thoroughly the methods and applications of PIC simulations to laboratory, space, and astrophysical plasma associated to relativistic jets and various instabilities providing useful insights into the evolution and associated phenomena such as the particle acceleration due to
Summary
Plasma is one of the four fundamental states of matter, and ubiquitous in the universe. Another numerical approach for the investigation of astrophysical plasma phenomena is (collisionless) PIC simulations. In these simulations, the plasma charged particles interact only with the electromagnetic fields that are produced by the particles themselves (in their motion), and the PIC method is employed to solve plasma kinetic (microscopic) processes. Particle acceleration, when efficient, modifies the turbulence around the shock on a long time scale, and the accelerated particles have a characteristic energy spectral index of sc ’ 2:2 in the ultrarelativistic limit They have unveiled the most relevant plasma instabilities that mediate injection and acceleration in relativistic shocks; and they have summarized
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