A New Approach to Compute Linear Landau Damping

Abstract

Fully kinetic simulations of the Vlasov equation require a careful numerical treatment of phase space advections to ensure accuracy and stability in six dimensions. To test the accuracy of full Vlasov codes, we have developed a surprisingly simple, semi-analytical method for calculating the exact solution of the linearized Vlasov-Maxwell system in the time domain. In this work, we introduce the method by calculating the ion density response and the ion distribution function response to an initial ion density perturbation in an electrostatic setup without a magnetic field.