Exploration of Strongly Coupled Plasma Dynamics and Equilibrium Using the Particle-in-Cell Methodology

Particle-based numerical simulations are required to study the dynamics and evolution of inhomogeneous nonequilibrium multispecies strongly coupled plasmas. Molecular dynamics (MD) and particle-in-cell (PIC) techniques and been compared previously [K. Y. Sanbonmatsu, et al., J. Phys. IV (France) 10, Pr5-259 (2000)], with the PIC methodology demonstrating the capability of improved accuracy over the MD simulations at high resolution. However, the PIC simulations were significantly slower, limiting their utility. Here we explore several schemes to improve the computational speed of such calculations including non-iterative, implicit EM field solvers and subgrid models. The simulations are compared directly with the results of Sanbonmatsu, et al., and a new theoretical analysis of the hypernetted chain model where all inter-species correlations are retained [V. Schwarz, et al., Contrib. Plasma Phys. 47, 324 (2007)].