An implicit electrostatic particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo (PIC/MC) algorithm is developed for the magnetized discharging device simulation. The inductive driving force can be considered. The direct implicit PIC algorithm (DIPIC) and energy conservation scheme are applied together and the grid heating can be eliminated in most cases. A tensor-susceptibility Poisson equation is constructed. Its discrete form is made up by a hybrid scheme in one-dimensional (1D) and two- dimensional (2D) cylindrical systems. A semi-coarsening multigrid method is used to solve the discrete system. The algorithm is applied to simulate the cylindrical magnetized target fusion (MTF) pre-ionization process and get qualitatively correct results. The potential application of the algorithm is discussed briefly.
We benchmark and analyze the error of energy conservation (EC) scheme in particle-in-cell/Monte Carlo (PIC/MC) algorithms by simulating the radio frequency discharge. The plasma heating behaviors and electron distributing functions obtained by one-dimensional (1D) simulation are analyzed. Both explicit and implicit algorithms are checked. The results showed that the EC scheme can eliminated the self-heating with wide grid spacing in both cases with a small reduction of the accuracies. In typical parameters, the EC implicit scheme has higher precision than EC explicit scheme. Some "numerical cooling" behaviors are observed and analyzed. Some other errors are also analyzed. The analysis showed that the EC implicit scheme can be used to qualitative estimation of some discharge problems with much less computational resource cost without much loss of accuracies.
A one dimensional quantum-hydrodynamic/particle-in-cell (QHD/PIC) model is used to study the interaction process of an intense proton beam (injection density of 1017 cm-3) with a dense plasma (initial density of -10^21 cm^-3), with the PIC method for simulating the beam particle dynamics and the QHD model for considering the quantum effects including the quantum statistical and quantum diffraction effects. By means of the QHD theory, the wake electron density and wakefields are calculated, while the proton beam density is calculated by the PIC method and compared to hydrodynamic results to justify that the PIC method is a more suitable way to simulate the beam particle dynamics. The calculation results show that the incident continuous proton beam when propagating in the plasma generates electron perturbations as well as wakefields oscillations with negative valleys and positive peaks where the proton beams are repelled by the positive wakefields and accelerated by the negative wakefields. Moreover, the quantum correction obviously hinders the electron perturbations as well as the wakefields. Therefore, it is necessary to consider the quantum effects in the interaction of a proton beam with cold dense plasmas, such as in the metal films.