Quiet Monte Carlo method for the simulation of hydrodynamics, radiation, transport, and plasma

Summary form only given, as follows. A new particle simulation technique, called quiet direct simulation Monte Carlo (QDSMC), has been developed for the purpose of modeling complex systems accurately and with low-noise. The method has been applied successfully to diffusion, hydrodynamics, magnetohydrodynamics and radiation transport. Current research is devoted to the application of QDSMC to the modeling of semi-collisional plasma dynamics. The key feature of QDSMC is the use of carefully chosen weights for the particles (e.g., Gauss-Hermite, for Maxwellian distributions), which are destroyed each time step after the particle information is deposited onto the grid and then reconstructed at the beginning of the next time step. The deterministic creation of particles leads to significantly reduced noise in the simulations with only a small number of particles (e.g., 4 particles/cell to simulate one-dimensional hydrodynamics), and the dynamic creation and destruction of particles overcomes the limited dynamical range typical of particle simulations.