Subatomic, High Energy and Plasma Physics seminar: James Juno

Abstract: Kinetic equations describe, from near first-principles, the physics of gases, plasmas, radiation, neutrino, and neutron transport. The robust, accurate, and cost-effective discretization of these fundamental equations poses unique challenges though, owing to these various kinetic equations’ high dimensionality and multi-scale nature. The challenges only grow when attempting to develop numerical methods for kinetic equations in extreme astrophysical environments, such as the dynamics around pulsars and black holes where (general) relativity is required to accurately model these plasmas. 

In this presentation, I will show recent extensions to the Gkeyll simulation framework which extend its novel grid-based kinetic methods to relativistic systems. The key insight lies in leveraging the Hamiltonian structure of the kinetic equation which permits not only the development of more numerically robust conservative methods, but the extension of these methods to more general coordinate systems which account for, e.g., spacetime curvature. We will show a few different applications of this work, including some recent simulations of plasma instabilities which may be responsible for radio emission in quiescent magnetar magnetospheres.