Development and Test of 2.5-Dimensional Electromagnetic PIC Simulation Code

Abstract

We have developed a 2.5-dimensional electromagnetic particle simulation code using the particle-in-cell (PIC) method to investigate electromagnetic phenomena that occur in space plasmas. Our code is based on the leap-frog method and the centered difference method for integration and differentiation of the governing equations. We adopted the relativistic Buneman-Boris method to solve the Lorentz force equation and the Esirkepov method to calculate the current density while maintaining charge conservation. Using the developed code, we performed test simulations for electron two-stream instability and electron temperature anisotropy induced instability with the same initial parameters as used in previously reported studies. The test simulation results are almost identical with those of the previous papers.

Keywords

• particle simulation
• PIC method
• two-stream instability
• whistler instability