Simulations of diocotron instability using a special-purpose computer, MDGRAPE-2

Abstract

The diocotron instability in a low-density non-neutral electron plasma is examined via numerical simulations. For the simulations, a current-vortex filament model and a special-purpose computer, MDGRAPE-2 are used. In the previous work, a simulation method based on the current-vortex filament model, which is called “current-vortex method,” is developed. It is assumed that electric current and vorticity have discontinuous filamentary distributions, and both point electric current and point vortex are confined in a filament, which is called “current-vortex filament.” In this paper, the current-vortex method with no electric current is applied to simulations of the non-neutral electron plasma. This is equivalent to the traditional point-vortex method. MDGRAPE-2 was originally designed for molecular dynamics simulations. It accelerates calculations of the Coulomb interactions, the van der Waals interactions and so on. It can also be used to accelerate calculations of the Biot–Savart integral. The diocotron modes reproduced by the simulations agree with the result predicted by linear theory. This indicates that the current-vortex method is applicable to problems of the non-neutral plasma. The linear growth rates of the diocotron instability in the simulations also agree with the theoretical ones. This implies that MDGRAPE-2 gives the sufficiently accurate results for the calculations of the current-vortex method. A mechanism of merging of electron clumps is demonstrated by the simulations. It is concluded that the electric field induced by the conducting wall makes the nonlinear stage unstable and causes the clumps to merge.