Mitigation of numerical Cerenkov radiation and instability using a hybrid finite difference-FFT Maxwell solver and a local charge conserving current deposit

A hybrid Maxwell solver for fully relativistic and electromagnetic (EM) particle-in-cell (PIC) codes is described. In this solver, the EM fields are solved in $k$ space by performing an FFT in one direction, while using finite difference operators in the other direction(s). This solver eliminates the numerical Cerenkov radiation for particles moving in the preferred direction. Moreover, the numerical Cerenkov instability (NCI) induced by the relativistically drifting plasma and beam can be eliminated using this hybrid solver by applying strategies that are similar to those recently developed for pure FFT solvers. A current correction is applied for the charge conserving current deposit to correctly account for the EM calculation in hybrid Yee-FFT solver. A theoretical analysis of the dispersion properties in vacuum and in a drifting plasma for the hybrid solver is presented, and compared with PIC simulations with good agreement obtained. This hybrid solver is applied to both 2D and 3D Cartesian and quasi-3D (in which the fields and current are decomposed into azimuthal harmonics) geometries. Illustrative results for laser wakefield accelerator simulation in a Lorentz boosted frame using the hybrid solver in the 2D Cartesian geometry are presented, and compared against results from 2D UPIC-EMMA simulation which uses a pure spectral Maxwell solver, and from OSIRIS 2D lab frame simulation using the standard Yee solver. Very good agreement is obtained which demonstrates the feasibility of using the hybrid solver for high fidelity simulation of relativistically drifting plasma with no evidence of the numerical Cerenkov instability

Laser-plasma interactions with a Fourier-Bessel Particle-in-Cell method

A new spectral particle-in-cell (PIC) method for plasma modeling is presented and discussed. In the proposed scheme, the Fourier-Bessel transform is used to translate the Maxwell equations to the quasi-cylindrical spectral domain. In this domain, the equations are solved analytically in time, and the spatial derivatives are approximated with high accuracy. In contrast to the finite-difference time domain (FDTD) methods that are commonly used in PIC, the developed method does not produce numerical dispersion, and does not involve grid staggering for the electric and magnetic fields. These features are especially valuable in modeling the wakefield acceleration of particles in plasmas. The proposed algorithm is implemented in the code PLARES-PIC, and the test simulations of laser plasma interactions are compared to the ones done with the quasi-cylindrical FDTD PIC code CALDER-CIRC.Comment: submitted to Phys. Plasma