Development of a Parallel Multi-Dimensional Grid-Based Vlasov Equation Solver

We present a parallel, multi-dimensional grid-based Vlasov solver(Vlasolver) for collisionless plasma simulations. The Vlasov-Poisson system is solved using the third-order Positive Flux Conservation(PFC) scheme(Filbet, 2001; Umeda, 2008). The parallelization of the code is implemented using domain decomposition and MPI. We present two application studies to demonstrate the capabilities of Vlasolver. The first one is a re-evaluation of one-dimensional expansion of collisionless plasma expansion into vacuum. The second one is a two-dimensional simulation of plasma plume emitted from plasma thrusters. It is shown that the grid-based method eliminates the inherent statistical noise in particle-based methods and allows us to extend the solution beyond the self-similar expansion region and resolve the effects from electron time scale wave perturbations. We find that the grid-based Vlasov method is advantageous over particle-based methods for simulations of extremely non-homogeneous plasmas due to its capability to eliminate statistical noise in higher order velocity moments in the low-density region.