Implementations of mesh refinement schemes for Particle-In-Cell plasma simulations Original Research Article

Plasma simulations are often rendered challenging by the disparity of scales in time and in space which must be resolved. When these disparities are in distinctive zones of the simulation region, a method which has proven to be effective in other areas (e.g., fluid dynamics simulations) is the mesh refinement technique. We briefly discuss the challenges posed by coupling this technique with plasma Particle-In-Cell simulations and present two implementations in more detail, with examples.