Structure preserving numerical methods for the Vlasov equation
For computational plasma physicists, this work provides a structure-preserving numerical method for the Vlasov-Poisson system, though it is an incremental improvement over existing methods.
The paper addresses the preservation of physical invariants in long-time integration of the Vlasov equation using a semi-Lagrangian discontinuous Galerkin method, demonstrating its performance on the two-stream instability problem.
To preserve a number of physically relevant invariants is a major concern when considering long time integration of the Vlasov equation. In the present work we consider the semi-Lagrangian discontinuous Galerkin method for the Vlasov-Poisson system. We discuss the performance of this method and compare it to cubic spline interpolation, where appropriate. In addition, numerical simulations for the two-stream instability are shown.