A High Order Multi-Dimensional Characteristic Tracing Strategy for the Vlasov-Poisson System

In this paper, we consider a finite difference grid-based semi-Lagrangian approach in solving the Vlasov-Poisson (VP) system. Many of existing methods are based on dimensional splitting, which decouples the problem into solving linear advection problems, see {\em Cheng and Knorr, Journal of Computational Physics, 22(1976)}. However, such splitting is subject to the splitting error. If we consider multi-dimensional problems without splitting, difficulty arises in tracing characteristics with high order accuracy. Specifically, the evolution of characteristics is subject to the electric field which is determined globally from the distribution of particle densities via the Poisson's equation. In this paper, we propose a novel strategy of tracing characteristics high order in time via a two-stage multi-derivative prediction-correction approach and by using moment equations of the VP system. With the foot of characteristics being accurately located, we proposed to use weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) interpolation to recover function values between grid points, therefore to update solutions at the next time level. The proposed algorithm does not have time step restriction as Eulerian approach and enjoys high order spatial and temporal accuracy. However, such finite difference algorithm does not enjoy mass conservation; we discuss one possible way of resolving such issue and its potential challenge in numerical stability. The performance of the proposed schemes are numerically demonstrated via classical test problems such as Landau damping and two stream instabilities

A sparse grid discontinuous Galerkin method for high-dimensional transport equations and its application to kinetic simulations

In this paper, we develop a sparse grid discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme for transport equations and applied it to kinetic simulations. The method uses the weak formulations of traditional Runge-Kutta DG (RKDG) schemes for hyperbolic problems and is proven to be $L^2$ stable and convergent. A major advantage of the scheme lies in its low computational and storage cost due to the employed sparse finite element approximation space. This attractive feature is explored in simulating Vlasov and Boltzmann transport equations. Good performance in accuracy and conservation is verified by numerical tests in up to four dimensions

Stochastic Galerkin Methods for the Boltzmann-Poisson system

We study uncertainty quantification for a Boltzmann-Poisson system that models electron transport in semiconductors and the physical collision mechanisms over the charges. We use the stochastic Galerkin method in order to handle the randomness associated with the problem. The main uncertainty in the Boltzmann equation concerns the initial conditions for a large number of particles, which is why the problem is formulated in terms of a probability density in phase space. The second source of uncertainty, directly related to the quantum nature of the problem, is the collision operator, as its structure in this semiclassical model comes from the quantum scattering matrices operating on the wave function associated to the electron probability density. Additional sources of uncertainty are transport, boundary data, etc. In this study we choose first the phonon energy as a random variable, since its value influences the energy jump appearing in the collision integral for electron-phonon scattering. Then we choose the lattice temperature as a random variable, since it defines the value of the collision operator terms in the case of electron-phonon scattering by being a parameter of the phonon distribution. The random variable for this case is a scalar then. Finally, we present our numerical simulations.Comment: A few style corrections were performed. Extension of abstract and conclusions in preprin

Study of conservation and recurrence of Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin schemes for Vlasov-Poisson systems

In this paper we consider Runge-Kutta discontinuous Galerkin (RKDG) schemes for Vlasov-Poisson systems that model collisionless plasmas. One-dimensional systems are emphasized. The RKDG method, originally devised to solve conservation laws, is seen to have excellent conservation properties, be readily designed for arbitrary order of accuracy, and capable of being used with a positivity-preserving limiter that guarantees positivity of the distribution functions. The RKDG solver for the Vlasov equation is the main focus, while the electric field is obtained through the classical representation by Green's function for the Poisson equation. A rigorous study of recurrence of the DG methods is presented by Fourier analysis, and the impact of different polynomial spaces and the positivity-preserving limiters on the quality of the solutions is ascertained. Several benchmark test problems, such as Landau damping, two-stream instability and the KEEN (Kinetic Electrostatic Electron Nonlinear) wave, are given

A Conservative Scheme for Vlasov Poisson Landau modeling collisional plasmas

We have developed a deterministic conservative solver for the inhomogeneous Fokker-Planck-Landau equation coupled with the Poisson equation, which is a {classical mean-field} primary model for collisional plasmas. Two subproblems, i.e. the Vlasov-Poisson problem and homogeneous Landau problem, are obtained through time-splitting methods, and treated separately by the Runge-Kutta Discontinuous Galerkin method and a conservative spectral method, respectively. To ensure conservation when projecting between the two different computing grids, a special conservation routine is designed to link the solutions of these two subproblems. This conservation routine accurately enforces conservation of moments in Fourier space. The entire numerical scheme is implemented with parallelization with hybrid MPI and OpenMP. Numerical experiments are provided to study linear and nonlinear Landau Damping problems and two-stream flow problem as well.Comment: To appear in Jour. Comp. Physic

Discontinuous Galerkin Deterministic Solvers for a Boltzmann-Poisson Model of Hot Electron Transport by Averaged Empirical Pseudopotential Band Structures

The purpose of this work is to incorporate numerically, in a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) solver of a Boltzmann-Poisson model for hot electron transport, an electronic conduction band whose values are obtained by the spherical averaging of the full band structure given by a local empirical pseudopotential method (EPM) around a local minimum of the conduction band for silicon, as a midpoint between a radial band model and an anisotropic full band, in order to provide a more accurate physical description of the electron group velocity and conduction energy band structure in a semiconductor. This gives a better quantitative description of the transport and collision phenomena that fundamentally define the behaviour of the Boltzmann - Poisson model for electron transport used in this work. The numerical values of the derivatives of this conduction energy band, needed for the description of the electron group velocity, are obtained by means of a cubic spline interpolation. The EPM-Boltzmann-Poisson transport with this spherically averaged EPM calculated energy surface is numerically simulated and compared to the output of traditional analytic band models such as the parabolic and Kane bands, numerically implemented too, for the case of 1D $n^+-n-n^+$ silicon diodes with 400nm and 50nm channels. Quantitative differences are observed in the kinetic moments related to the conduction energy band used, such as mean velocity, average energy, and electric current (momentum).Comment: submission to CMAME (Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering) Journal as a reply to the reviewers on February 201

Galerkin Methods for Boltzmann-Poisson transport with reflection conditions on rough boundaries

We consider in this paper the mathematical and numerical modelling of reflective boundary conditions (BC) associated to Boltzmann - Poisson systems, including diffusive reflection in addition to specularity, in the context of electron transport in semiconductor device modelling at nano scales, and their implementation in Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) schemes. We study these BC on the physical boundaries of the device and develop a numerical approximation to model an insulating boundary condition, or equivalently, a pointwise zero flux mathematical condition for the electron transport equation. Such condition balances the incident and reflective momentum flux at the microscopic level, pointwise at the boundary, in the case of a more general mixed reflection with momentum dependant specularity probability $p(\vec{k})$. We compare the computational prediction of physical observables given by the numerical implementation of these different reflection conditions in our DG scheme for BP models, and observe that the diffusive condition influences the kinetic moments over the whole domain in position space.Comment: Paper accepted for publication in Journal of Computational Physics. -Conclusions section expanded -Title changed with respect to previous preprint version -New subsections related to simulations of 2D double gated MOSFET and comparison of bulk silicon with collisionless plasma under reflective and periodic boundary condition

Entropy-stable positivity-preserving DG schemes for Boltzmann-Poisson models of collisional electronic transport along energy bands

This work develops entropy-stable positivity-preserving DG methods as a computational scheme for Boltzmann-Poisson systems modeling the pdf of electronic transport along energy bands in semiconductor crystal lattices. We pose, using spherical or energy-angular variables as momentum coordinates, the corresponding Vlasov Boltzmann eq. with a linear collision operator with a singular measure modeling the scattering as functions of the energy band. We show stability results of semi-discrete DG schemes under an entropy norm for 1D-position 2D-momentum, and 2D-position 3D-momentum, using the dissipative properties of the collisional operator given its entropy inequality, which depends on the whole Hamiltonian rather than only the kinetic energy. For the 1D problem, knowledge of the analytic solution to Poisson and of the convergence to a constant current is crucial to obtain full stability. For the 2D problem, specular reflection BC are considered in addition to periodicity in the estimate for stability under an entropy norm. Regarding positivity preservation (1D position), we treat the collision operator as a source term and find convex combinations of the transport and collision terms which guarantee the positivity of the cell average of our numerical pdf at the next time step. The positivity of the numerical pdf in the whole domain is guaranteed by applying the natural limiters that preserve the cell average but modify the slope of the piecewise linear solutions in order to make the function non-negative. The use of a spherical coordinate system $\vec{p}(|\vec{p}|,\mu=cos\theta,\varphi)$ is slightly different to the choice in previous DG solvers for BP, since the proposed DG formulation gives simpler integrals involving just piecewise polynomial functions for both transport and collision terms, which is more adequate for Gaussian quadrature than previous approaches.Comment: Preprint. The first author acknowledges discussions with Eirik Endeve and Cory Hauck during the time he spent visiting them at ORNL (restricted to positivity preservation, appearing on arXiv:1711.03949) on a trip paid by the kinet grant NSF-RNMS DMS-1107465. V2 is a replacement for V1. V2 has added some references and corrected typos (not affecting any of the calculations

Fast sparse grid simulations of fifth order WENO scheme for high dimensional hyperbolic PDEs

The weighted essentially non-oscillatory (WENO) schemes are a popular class of high order accurate numerical methods for solving hyperbolic partial differential equations (PDEs). However when the spatial dimensions are high, the number of spatial grid points increases significantly. It leads to large amount of operations and computational costs in the numerical simulations by using nonlinear high order accuracy WENO schemes such as a fifth order WENO scheme. How to achieve fast simulations by high order WENO methods for high spatial dimension hyperbolic PDEs is a challenging and important question. In the literature, sparse-grid technique has been developed as a very efficient approximation tool for high dimensional problems. In a recent work [Lu, Chen and Zhang, Pure and Applied Mathematics Quarterly, 14 (2018) 57-86], a third order finite difference WENO method with sparse-grid combination technique was designed to solve multidimensional hyperbolic equations including both linear advection equations and nonlinear Burgers' equations. In application problems, higher than third order WENO schemes are often preferred in order to efficiently resolve the complex solution structures. In this paper, we extend the approach to higher order WENO simulations specifically the fifth order WENO scheme. A fifth order WENO interpolation is applied in the prolongation part of the sparse-grid combination technique to deal with discontinuous solutions. Benchmark problems are first solved to show that significant CPU times are saved while both fifth order accuracy and stability of the WENO scheme are preserved for simulations on sparse grids. The fifth order sparse grid WENO method is then applied to kinetic problems modeled by high dimensional Vlasov based PDEs to further demonstrate large savings of computational costs by comparing with simulations on regular single grids.Comment: 36 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1804.0072

Bound-Preserving Discontinuous Galerkin Methods for Conservative Phase Space Advection in Curvilinear Coordinates

We extend the positivity-preserving method of Zhang & Shu (2010, JCP, 229, 3091-3120) to simulate the advection of neutral particles in phase space using curvilinear coordinates. The ability to utilize these coordinates is important for non-equilibrium transport problems in general relativity and also in science and engineering applications with specific geometries. The method achieves high-order accuracy using Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) discretization of phase space and strong stability-preserving, Runge-Kutta (SSP-RK) time integration. Special care in taken to ensure that the method preserves strict bounds for the phase space distribution function $f$; i.e., $f\in[0,1]$. The combination of suitable CFL conditions and the use of the high-order limiter proposed in Zhang & Shu (2010) is sufficient to ensure positivity of the distribution function. However, to ensure that the distribution function satisfies the upper bound, the discretization must, in addition, preserve the divergence-free property of the phase space flow. Proofs that highlight the necessary conditions are presented for general curvilinear coordinates, and the details of these conditions are worked out for some commonly used coordinate systems (i.e., spherical polar spatial coordinates in spherical symmetry and cylindrical spatial coordinates in axial symmetry, both with spherical momentum coordinates). Results from numerical experiments --- including one example in spherical symmetry adopting the Schwarzschild metric --- demonstrate that the method achieves high-order accuracy and that the distribution function satisfies the maximum principle.Comment: Submitted to JC