This topical volume has been written with the explicit aim to provide a high-level introductory book for a field where there were no elementary textbooks available. It addresses postgraduate students and young scientists investigating space plasma physics or planning to specialize in this field. Experienced researchers will find this book to be a comprehensive source of reference as well as a source of advanced topics for their courses.

Klappentext

The aim of this book is twofold: to provide an introduction for newcomers to state of the art computer simulation techniques in space plasma physics and an overview of current developments. Computer simulation has reached a stage where it can be a highly useful tool for guiding theory and for making predictions of space plasma phenomena, ranging from microscopic to global scales. The various articles are arranged, as much as possible, according to the - derlying simulation technique, starting with the technique that makes the least number of assumptions: a fully kinetic approach which solves the coupled set of Maxwell's equations for the electromagnetic ?eld and the equations of motion for a very large number of charged particles (electrons and ions) in this ?eld. Clearly, this is also the computationally most demanding model. Therefore, even with present day high performance computers, it is the most restrictive in terms of the space and time domain and the range of particle parameters that can be covered by the simulation experiments. It still makes sense, therefore, to also use models, which due to their simp- fying assumptions, seem less realistic, although the e?ect of these assumptions on the outcome of the simulation experiments needs to be carefully assessed.

Inhalt

Particle-in-Cell Simulation of Plasmas- A Tutorial.- Parallel 3-D Electromagnetic Particle Code Using High Performance FORTRAN: Parallel TRISTAN.- Full Particle Electromagnetic Simulation of Collisionless Shocks.- Simulation of Electron Beam Instabilities and Nonlinear Potential Structures.- Kinetic Simulation of Inhomogeneous Plasma with a Variable Sized Grid System.- Low Noise Electrostatic and Electromagnetic Delta-f Particle-in-Cell Simulation of Plasmas.- Particle Simulation of Dusty Plasmas.- Hybrid Simulation Codes: Past, Present and Future-A Tutorial.- Hall Magnetohydrodynamics - A Tutorial.- Fluid Plasma Simulation of Coupled Systems: Ionosphere and Magnetosphere.- Global Magnetohydrodynamics - A Tutorial.- Adaptive Mesh Refinement for Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation.- Finite Volume TVD Schemes for Magnetohydrodynamics on Unstructered Grids.- Global Magnetohydrodynamic Simulation Using High Performance FORTRAN on Parallel Computers.- Numerical Schemes for the Analysis of Turbulence - A Tutorial.