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D. Mueller, A. Ipp, D. Gelfand:
"Re-examining particle-in-cell simulations";
Poster: 53. Internationale Universitätswochen für Theoretische Physik, Schladming Winter School 2015, Schladming; 2015-03-01 - 2015-03-06.

Particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations have been used since the 1950s to simulate electromagnetic plasmas. In a PIC simulation, charged particles are tracked on a fixed background grid on which Maxwell's equations are solved. We want to re-examine PIC simulations in order to better understand systematic errors involed. We recover and analyze known plasma instabilities like two-stream instability or Weibel instability. A reference simulation is implemented as an open source framework, and we invite other research groups to participate and collaborate. Eventually we want to apply PIC simulations to non-abelian gauge theories for so-called colored PIC (CPIC) simulations. This will enable us to simulate early dynamics of the quark-gluon-plasma, including the emergence and evolution of plasma instabilities.

Project Head Andreas Ipp:
Quark-Gluon-Plasma Dynamik mit Colored-Particle-in-Cell Simulationen