Time-splitting methods for the cold-plasma model using finite element exterior calculus
Elena Moral Sánchez, Martin Campos Pinto, Yaman Güçlü, Omar Maj
Abstract
In this work we propose a high-order structure-preserving discretization of the cold plasma model which describes the propagation of electromagnetic waves in magnetized plasmas. By utilizing B-Splines Finite Elements Exterior Calculus, we derive a space discretization that preserves the underlying Hamiltonian structure of the model, and we study two stable time-splitting geometrical integrators. We approximate an incoming wave boundary condition in such a way that the resulting schemes are compatible with a time-harmonic / transient decomposition of the solution, which allows us to establish their long-time stability. This approach readily applies to curvilinear and complex domains. We perform a numerical study of these schemes which compares their cost and accuracy against a standard Crank-Nicolson time integrator, and we run realistic simulations where the long-term behaviour is assessed using frequency-domain solutions. Our solvers are three-dimensional and parallel. They are implemented in the Python library PSYDAC, which makes them memory-efficient.
BibTeX
@article{Moral_S_nchez_2025,
title={Time-splitting methods for the cold-plasma model using finite element exterior calculus},
volume={541},
ISSN={0021-9991},
url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jcp.2025.114305},
DOI={10.1016/j.jcp.2025.114305},
journal={Journal of Computational Physics},
publisher={Elsevier BV},
author={Moral Sánchez, Elena and Campos Pinto, Martin and Güçlü, Yaman and Maj, Omar},
year={2025},
month=nov,
pages={114305} }