N-body numerical simulation of collisional charged particle transport

Yasutaro Nishimura^1*

¹Institute of Space and Plasma Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan

* Presenter:Yasutaro Nishimura, email:nishimura@pssc.ncku.edu.tw

Coulomb collisional transport process is investigated in the presence of background magnetic field employing an N-body numerical simulation. The N-body simulation has a severe computational restriction when the distance between two charged particles becomes small to the extent the kinetic energy and the potential energy between the two becomes comparable. In this work, analytical solutions are smoothly matched to the numerical solutions at the close encounter of two particles. Assuming that the rest of the (N-2) charged particles are ignorable, the problem reduces to that of the Kepler problem (two bodies interact by a central force) which provides us with analytical solutions. The charged particle's diffusion rate is examined with the first principle-based numerical simulation tool.

Keywords: Plasma kinetic theory, N-body gravitational algorithm, Ambipolar diffusion