Electromagnetic Wave Analysis in Collisional Discontinuous Galerkin Particle-in-Cell Simulations

Discontinuous Galerkin particle-in-cell (DG-PIC) models are used to simulate kinetic plasma dynamics. They solve Maxwell's equations via a discontinuous Galerkin (DG) scheme to calculate the electric and magnetic fields and solve the Boltzmann equation via a particle-in-cell scheme (PIC). DG schemes maintain high-order accuracy within each cell while having explicit, semidiscrete forms that allow wave solutions to develop for unstructured meshes. PIC schemes allow for non-Maxwellian velocity distributions to develop by simulating charged species as discrete macroparticles, which can give rise to waves and instabilities. Coulomb collisions can be significant in highly ionized plasmas and may dampen wave behavior as they relax velocity distributions towards a Maxwellian. This work will show the use of a collisional DG-PIC scheme to study electromagnetic radiation created from hypervelocity impacts created spacecraft, illustrating its benefits in plasma-wave analysis.