A Structure-Preserving Decorated Particle Method for the Vlasov-Poisson System
This work provides a practical demonstration of a structure-preserving paradigm for kinetic plasma simulations, potentially reducing computational cost while maintaining accuracy.
The authors implement a structure-preserving particle method for the Vlasov-Poisson system using decorated particles with shape degrees of freedom, showing that far fewer decorated particles than standard PIC macro-particles achieve comparable accuracy.
We revisit the Scovel-Weinstein framework (Scovel & Weinstein, CPAM 1994) for reducing the Vlasov-Poisson system while preserving its Hamiltonian structure. Standard particle-in-cell (PIC) algorithms approximate the distribution function by macro-particles with position and velocity. In contrast, Scovel-Weinstein decorated particles involve additional shape degrees of freedom, while maintaining a finite-dimensional reduction with Hamiltonian structure inherited from the continuum model. Although the original work established this structure three decades ago, its computational potential has remained largely unexplored. We present a practical implementation of the Scovel-Weinstein model and compare it with a standard PIC algorithm. Numerical experiments demonstrate that macro-particles in standard PIC can be replaced by far fewer decorated particles while retaining comparable accuracy. This decorated particle approach offers a new structure-preserving paradigm for kinetic plasma simulation.