Particle-In-Cell Simulations of Ponderomotively Driven Plasma Waves with Improved Phase-Space Tiling

The broad utility of the novel BARS/Mini-BARS [1] approach to improved phase-space tiling in particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations is considered through direct code-code comparison of simulations of ponderomotively-driven large-amplitude plasma waves, such as those found in laser-plasma-interactions in high-energy-density plasma experiments [2]. Long-time particle-trapping physics is explored, and simulations are 1D-1V with a short drive duration compared to the bounce period of trapped particles. Here, we assess both the computational speed-up and impact on preserving/improving resolution in dynamic regions of phase-space in PIC codes through the use of the Mini-BARS algorithm. Code comparisons are made between the fully-implicit kinetic plasma code DPIC [3], as well as a basic electrostatic PIC code written in Python and run on a laptop.

[1] B. Afeyan, S. Finnegan, L. Chacon, BARS: Bidirectional Adaptive Refinement Scheme for learned, adaptive particle-in-cell simulations of plasma kinetics, Manuscript in preparation, 2022

[2] S.M. Finnegan et al, Phys. Plasmas 28 (2021)

[3] G. Chen and L Chacon, Comp. Phys. Comm. 197, (2015)