No abstract

The Vlasov equation is a kinetic model describing the evolution of a plasma which is a globally neutral gas of charged particles. It is self-consistently coupled with Poisson's equation, which rules the evolution of the electric field. In this paper, we introduce a new class of forward semi-Lagrangian schemes for the Vlasov-Poisson system based on a Cauchy Kovalevsky (CK) procedure for the numerical solution of the characteristic curves. Exact conservation properties of the first moments of the distribution function for the schemes are derived and a convergence study is performed that applies as well for the CK scheme as for a more classical Verlet scheme. A L 1 convergence of the schemes will be proved. Error estimates [in O t 2 + h 2 + h 2 t for Verlet] are obtained, where t and h = max( x, v) are the discretization parameters.

In this report, a charge preserving numerical resolution of the 1D Vlasov-Ampère equation is achieved, with a forward Semi-Lagrangian method introduced in [10]. The Vlasov equation belongs to the kinetic way of simulating plasmas evolution, and is coupled with the Poisson's equation, or equivalently under charge conservation, the Ampère's one, which self-consistently rules the electric field evolution. In order to ensure having proper physical solutions, it is necessary that the scheme preserves charge numerically. B-Spline deposition will be used for the interpolation step. The solving of the characteristics will be made with a Runge-Kutta 2 method and with a Cauchy-Kovalevsky procedure.