Recovering the Damping Rates of Cyclotron Damped Plasma Waves from Simulation Data. (8th March 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Schreiner, Cedric; Kilian, Patrick; Spanier, Felix
• Is Part Of: Communications in computational physics. Volume 21:Number 4(2017:Apr.)
• Page Start: 947
• Page End: 980
• Publication Date: 2017-03-08
• Subjects: 65M75, -- 65T99, -- 82C10, -- 85A30; Simulation, -- space physics, -- plasma, -- cyclotron resonance, -- wave damping; Mathematical physics -- Data processing -- Periodicals; Physics -- Data processing -- Periodicals; 530.150285
• DOI: 10.4208/cicp.OA-2016-0091
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1815-2406

Abstract

Abstract: Plasma waves with frequencies close to the particular gyrofrequencies of the charged particles in the plasma lose energy due to cyclotron damping. We briefly discuss the gyro-resonance of low frequency plasma waves and ions particularly with regard to particle-in-cell (PiC) simulations. A setup is outlined which uses artificially excited waves in the damped regime of the wave mode's dispersion relation to track the damping of the wave's electromagnetic fields. Extracting the damping rate directly fromthe field data in real or Fourier space is an intricate and non-trivial task. We therefore present a simple method of obtaining the damping rate Γ from the simulation data. This method is described in detail, focusing on a step-by-step explanation of the course of actions. In a first application to a test simulation we find that the damping rates obtained from this simulation generally are in good agreement with theoretical predictions. We then compare the results of one-, two- and three-dimensional simulation setups and simulations with different physical parameter sets.