Kinetic Solvers with Adaptive Mesh in Phase Space for Low-Temperature Plasmas

Abstract

We describe the implementation of 1d1v and 1d2v Vlasov and Fokker-Planck kinetic solvers with adaptive mesh refinement in phase space (AMPS) and coupling these kinetic solvers to Poisson equation solver for electric fields. We demonstrate that coupling AMPS kinetic and electrostatic solvers can be done efficiently without splitting phase-space transport. We show that Eulerian fluid and kinetic solvers with dynamically adaptive Cartesian mesh can be used for simulations of collisionless plasma expansion into vacuum. The Vlasov-Fokker-Planck solver is demonstrated for the analysis of electron acceleration and scattering as well as the generation of runaway electrons in spatially inhomogeneous electric fields.