2025_PIC_workshop

Mini-workshop for PIC simulation

Modeling plasma behavior through first-principles simulations is a key challenge in computational plasma physics and high-energy astrophysics. Particle-in-Cell (PIC) simulations provide a self-consistent framework to capture the coupled dynamics of particles and fields in both laboratory and astrophysical settings. A mini-workshop will be held at by the Center of Astronomy and Gravitation (CAG) at NTNU on April 18, 2025, offering a compact, tutorial-style introduction to the principles of PIC methods and their practical implementation.

Led by Dr. Chun-Sung Jao (NCKU), the program will cover the foundations of electrostatic and electromagnetic PIC modeling, including particle pushers, field solvers, and relativistic effects, culminating in a hands-on session with the 1D PIC code KEMPO1. This workshop is designed for students and early-career researchers interested in numerical plasma physics and kinetic modeling. Join us for this mini-workshop on PIC simulations, where physics meets code in the dynamic world of plasma modeling!

registration

Date: 4/18 (Friday)

Location:

F104, department of Physics, National Taiwan Normal University, Gongguan Campus (campus [map])

Lecturer: Dr. Chun-Sung Jao  饒駿頌  博士 (NCKU)

*Note for tutorial: Please bring your laptop and come prepared to run example simulations using the provided MATLAB code. Make sure MATLAB is installed and ready to go, so you can fully participate in the hands-on coding session.

program

09:00 – 9:20 – Introduction

  • Introduction to plasma physics
  • Introduction to plasma simulation

09:20 – 10:20 – Model description I

  • Random number generation and its application
  • Particle weighting and normalization
  • Particle pusher
  • Poisson’s equation
  • One-dimensional electrostatic PIC code

10:20 – 10:30 – Break

10:30 – 11:00 – Model description II

  • Numerical tips and tricks in PIC simulations
  • Electromagnetic field solver
  • Relativistic particle pusher
  • One-dimensional electromagnetic PIC code
  • Visualization

11:00 – 12:00 – Code tutorial – KEMPO1

Please bring your laptop and come prepared to run example simulations using the shared MATLAB code. Make sure MATLAB is installed and ready to go, so you can fully participate in the hands-on coding session.

12:00 – 12:15 – Model description III

  • Advanced boundary conditions
  • Parallelization and high-performance computing
  • Advanced PIC model

12:15 – 12:30 – Q&A.

LOC: Hung-Yi Pu, Wei-Ling Tseng

*The workshop is sponsored by Department of Earth Science and Deparment of Physics at National Taiwan Normal University, as well as Yusan Young Scholar program,  the Ministry of Education (MOE) in Taiwan.