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Jingwei Hu

Publications and source records attributed to Jingwei Hu.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Asymptotic perpendicular transport in low-beta collisionless plasma

Kinetic physics, including finite Larmor radius (FLR) effects, are known to affect the physics of magnetized plasma phenomena such as the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities. Accurately incorporating FLR effects into fluid simulations requires moment closures for the heat flux and stress tensor, including the gyroviscous stress in collisionless magnetized plasmas. However, the most commonly used gyroviscous stress tensor closure (Braginskii Rev. Plasma Phys., 1965) is based on a strongly collisional assumption for the asymptotic expansion of the kinetic equation in the so-called fast-dynamics ordering. This collisional assumption becomes less valid for some high-temperature plasmas. To explore perpendicular transport in collisionless and weakly collisional plasmas, an asymptotic analysis of the weakly collisional Vlasov equation in the slow-dynamics or drift ordering is performed in a new "semi-fluid" formalism, which integrates in perpendicular velocity to obtain a five-moment system. The associated heat flux and stress tensor closures are determined via a Hilbert expansion of the kinetic equation. A numerically affordable approximation to the stress tensor is proposed which adjusts the Braginskii closure to account for temperature gradient-driven stress. Continuum kinetic simulations of a family of sheared-flow configurations with variable magnetization and temperature gradients are performed to validate the drift ordering semi-fluid expansion. The expected convergence with magnetization is observed, and residuals are examined and discussed in terms of their relationship to higher-order terms in the expansion. The adjusted Braginskii closure is found to accurately correct for the error committed by the Braginskii gyroviscous stress tensor closure in the presence of temperature gradients.

physics.comp-ph↗

Fully discrete energy-dissipative and conservative discrete gradient particle methods for a class of continuity equations

Structure-preserving particle methods have recently been proposed for a class of nonlinear continuity equations, including aggregation-diffusion equation in [J. Carrillo, K. Craig, F. Patacchini, Calc. Var., 58 (2019), pp. 53] and the Landau equation in [J. Carrillo, J. Hu., L. Wang, J. Wu, J. Comput. Phys. X, 7 (2020), pp. 100066]. One common feature to these equations is that they both admit some variational formulation, which upon proper regularization, leads to particle approximations dissipating the energy and conserving some quantities simultaneously at the semi-discrete level. In this paper, we formulate continuity equations with a density dependent bilinear form associated with the variational derivative of the energy functional and prove that appropriate particle methods satisfy a compatibility condition with its regularized energy. This enables us to utilize discrete gradient time integrators and show that the energy can be dissipated and the mass conserved simultaneously at the fully discrete level. In the case of the Landau equation, we prove that our approach also conserves the momentum and kinetic energy at the fully discrete level. Several numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the dissipative and conservative properties of our proposed method.

math.NA↗

Transport based particle methods for the Fokker-Planck-Landau equation

We propose a particle method for numerically solving the Landau equation, inspired by the score-based transport modeling (SBTM) method for the Fokker-Planck equation. This method can preserve some important physical properties of the Landau equation, such as the conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, and decay of estimated entropy. We prove that matching the gradient of the logarithm of the approximate solution is enough to recover the true solution to the Landau equation with Maxwellian molecules. Several numerical experiments in low and moderately high dimensions are performed, with particular emphasis on comparing the proposed method with the traditional particle or blob method.

math.NA↗

A Nonlinear, Conservative, Entropic Fokker-Planck Model for Multi-Species Collisions

A multi-species Fokker-Planck model for simulating particle collisions in a plasma is presented. The model includes various parameters that must be tuned. Under reasonable assumptions on these parameters, the model satisfies appropriate conservation laws, dissipates an entropy, and satisfies an $\mathcal{H}$-Theorem. In addition, the model parameters provide the additional flexibility that is used to match simultaneously momentum and temperature relaxation formulas derived from the Boltzmann collision operator for a binary mixture with Coulomb potentials. A numerical method for solving the resulting space-homogeneous kinetic equation is presented and two examples are provided to demonstrate the relaxation of species bulk velocities and temperatures to their equilibrium values.

math-ph↗

Robust and conservative dynamical low-rank methods for the Vlasov equation via a novel macro-micro decomposition

Dynamical low-rank (DLR) approximation has gained interest in recent years as a viable solution to the curse of dimensionality in the numerical solution of kinetic equations including the Boltzmann and Vlasov equations. These methods include the projector-splitting and Basis-update & Galerkin (BUG) DLR integrators, and have shown promise at greatly improving the computational efficiency of kinetic solutions. However, this often comes at the cost of conservation of charge, current and energy. In this work we show how a novel macro-micro decomposition may be used to separate the distribution function into two components, one of which carries the conserved quantities, and the other of which is orthogonal to them. We apply DLR approximation to the latter, and thereby achieve a clean and extensible approach to a conservative DLR scheme which retains the computational advantages of the base scheme. Moreover, our approach requires no change to the mechanics of the DLR approximation, so it is compatible with both the BUG family of integrators and the projector-splitting integrator which we use here. We describe a first-order integrator which can exactly conserve charge and either current or energy, as well as an integrator which exactly conserves charge and energy and exhibits second-order accuracy on our test problems. To highlight the flexibility of the proposed macro-micro decomposition, we implement a pair of velocity space discretizations, and verify the claimed accuracy and conservation properties on a suite of plasma benchmark problems.

math.NA↗

The Collisional Particle-In-Cell Method for the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau Equations

We introduce an extension of the particle-in-cell (PIC) method that captures the Landau collisional effects in the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau equations. The method arises from a regularisation of the variational formulation of the Landau equation, leading to a discretisation of the collision operator that conserves mass, charge, momentum, and energy, while increasing the (regularised) entropy. The collisional effects appear as a fully deterministic effective force, thus the method does not require any transport-collision splitting. The scheme can be used in arbitrary dimension, and for a general interaction, including the Coulomb case. We validate the scheme on scenarios such as the Landau damping, the two-stream instability, and the Weibel instability, demonstrating its effectiveness in the numerical simulation of plasma.

physics.plasm-ph↗

Global weak solutions for a nonlocal multispecies Fokker-Planck-Landau system

The global-in-time existence of weak solutions to a spatially homogeneous multispecies Fokker-Planck-Landau system for plasmas in the three-dimensional whole space is shown. The Fokker-Planck-Landau system is a simplification of the Landau equations assuming a linearized, velocity-independent, and isotropic kernel. The resulting equations depend nonlocally and nonlinearly on the moments of the distribution functions via the multispecies local Maxwellians. The existence proof is based on a three-level approximation scheme, energy and entropy estimates, as well as compactness results, and it holds for both soft and hard potentials.

math.AP↗

A particle method for the multispecies Landau equation

The multispecies Landau collision operator describes the two-particle, small scattering angle or grazing collisions in a plasma made up of different species of particles such as electrons and ions. Recently, a structure preserving deterministic particle method arXiv:1910.03080 has been developed for the single species spatially homogeneous Landau equation. This method relies on a regularization of the Landau collision operator so that an approximate solution, which is a linear combination of Dirac delta distributions, is well-defined. Based on a weak form of the regularized Landau equation, the time dependent locations of the Dirac delta functions satisfy a system of ordinary differential equations. In this work, we extend this particle method to the multispecies case, and examine its conservation of mass, momentum, and energy, and decay of entropy properties. We show that the equilibrium distribution of the regularized multispecies Landau equation is a Maxwellian distribution, and state a critical condition on the regularization parameters that guarantees a species independent equilibrium temperature. A convergence study comparing an exact multispecies BKW solution to the particle solution shows approximately 2nd order accuracy. Important physical properties such as conservation, decay of entropy, and equilibrium distribution of the particle method are demonstrated with several numerical examples.

math.NA↗

Uniform accuracy of implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta (IMEX-RK) schemes for hyperbolic systems with relaxation

Implicit-explicit Runge-Kutta (IMEX-RK) schemes are popular methods to treat multiscale equations that contain a stiff part and a non-stiff part, where the stiff part is characterized by a small parameter $\varepsilon$. In this work, we prove rigorously the uniform stability and uniform accuracy of a class of IMEX-RK schemes for a linear hyperbolic system with stiff relaxation. The result we obtain is optimal in the sense that it holds regardless of the value of $\varepsilon$ and the order of accuracy is the same as the design order of the original scheme, i.e., there is no order reduction.

math.NA↗

Bound-Preserving Finite-Volume Schemes for Systems of Continuity Equations with Saturation

We propose finite-volume schemes for general continuity equations which preserve positivity and global bounds that arise from saturation effects in the mobility function. In the case of gradient flows, the schemes dissipate the free energy at the fully discrete level. Moreover, these schemes are generalised to coupled systems of non-linear continuity equations, such as multispecies models in mathematical physics or biology, preserving the bounds and the dissipation of the energy whenever applicable. These results are illustrated through extensive numerical simulations which explore known behaviours in biology and showcase new phenomena not yet described by the literature.

math.NA↗

Asymptotic--preserving and energy stable dynamical low-rank approximation

Radiation transport problems are posed in a high-dimensional phase space, limiting the use of finely resolved numerical simulations. An emerging tool to efficiently reduce computational costs and memory footprint in such settings is dynamical low-rank approximation (DLRA). Despite its efficiency, numerical methods for DLRA need to be carefully constructed to guarantee stability while preserving crucial properties of the original problem. Important physical effects that one likes to preserve with DLRA include capturing the diffusion limit in the high-scattering regimes as well as dissipating energy. In this work we propose and analyze a dynamical low-rank method based on the "unconventional" basis-update & Galerkin step integrator. We show that this method is asymptotic-preserving, i.e., it captures the diffusion limit, and energy stable under a CFL condition. The derived CFL condition captures the transition from the hyperbolic to the parabolic regime when approaching the diffusion limit.

math.NA↗

A Systematic Study of the Short-Term X-ray Variability of Seyfert Galaxies I. Diversity of the X-ray Rms Spectra

The X-ray variability of active galactic nuclei (AGN) carries crucial information about the X-ray radiation mechanism. We performed a systematic study of the X-ray short-term (1-100 ks timescale) variability for a large sample of 78 Seyferts with 426 deep XMM-Newton observations. In this paper, we present the time-averaged spectra and rms spectra for the entire sample, which show a variety of properties. Based on the spectral shape, we divide the rms spectra into five subtypes and the time-averaged spectra into four subtypes. The most common shape of the rms spectra is concave-down where the rms peaks at $\sim$ 1 keV. We find that different sources can show similar time-averaged spectra and rms spectra. However, there is no one-to-one mapping between the subtypes of the time-averaged spectra and rms spectra, as similar time-averaged spectra can be accompanied by different rms spectra, and vice versa. This is likely because different physical mechanisms can produce similar rms spectra. For every subtype of the time-averaged spectra, we report its preferred subtypes of the rms spectra in both low- and high-frequency bands. We also compare the statistical properties for different subtypes, such as the black hole mass and Eddington ratio. Finally, we investigate the rms in the Fe K$α$ line regime and find that those with a broad and extended red-wing profile tend to show stronger variability than those showing a narrow or relatively symmetric profile. Our results demonstrate the necessity of performing joint spectral and variability modeling in order to understand the mechanism of the X-ray emission in AGN. All of the rms spectra have been made publicly available.

astro-ph.HE↗

A structure preserving numerical scheme for Fokker-Planck equations of structured neural networks with learning rules

In this work, we are concerned with a Fokker-Planck equation related to the nonlinear noisy leaky integrate-and-fire model for biological neural networks which are structured by the synaptic weights and equipped with the Hebbian learning rule. The equation contains a small parameter $\varepsilon$ separating the time scales of learning and reacting behavior of the neural system, and an asymptotic limit model can be derived by letting $\varepsilon\to 0$, where the microscopic quasi-static states and the macroscopic evolution equation are coupled through the total firing rate. To handle the endowed flux-shift structure and the multi-scale dynamics in a unified framework, we propose a numerical scheme for this equation that is mass conservative, unconditionally positivity preserving, and asymptotic preserving. We provide extensive numerical tests to verify the schemes' properties and carry out a set of numerical experiments to investigate the model's learning ability, and explore the solution's behavior when the neural network is excitatory.

math.NA↗

Efficient dynamical low-rank approximation for the Vlasov-Ampère-Fokker-Planck system

Kinetic equations are difficult to solve numerically due to their high dimensionality. A promising approach for reducing computational cost is the dynamical low-rank algorithm, which decouples the dimensions of the phase space by proposing an ansatz as the sum of separable (rank-1) functions in position and velocity respectively. The fluid asymptotic limit of collisional kinetic equations, obtained in the small-Knudsen number limit, admits a low-rank representation when written as $f = Mg$, where $M$ is the local Maxwellian, and $g$ is low-rank. We apply this decomposition to the Vlasov-Ampère-Fokker-Planck equation of plasma dynamics, considering the asymptotic limit of strong collisions and electric field. We implement our proposed algorithm and demonstrate the expected improvement in computation time by comparison to an implementation that evolves the full solution tensor $f$. We also demonstrate that our algorithm can capture dynamics in both the kinetic regime, and in the fluid regime with relatively lower computational effort, thereby efficiently capturing the asymptotic fluid limit.

math.NA↗

Luminosity function and event rate density of XMM-Newton-selected supernova shock-breakout candidates

A dozen X-ray supernova shock breakout (SN SBO) candidates were reported recently based on XMM-Newton archival data, which increased the X-ray selected SN SBO sample by an order of magnitude. Assuming they are genuine SN SBOs, we study the luminosity function (LF) by improving upon the method used in our previous work. The light curves and the spectra of the candidates were used to derive the maximum volume within which these objects could be detected with XMM-Newton by simulation. The results show that the SN SBO LF can be described by either a broken power law (BPL) with indices (at the 68$\%$ confidence level) of $0.48 \pm 0.28$ and $2.11 \pm 1.27$ before and after the break luminosity at $\log (L_b/\rm erg\,s^{-1})=$ $45.32 \pm 0.55$ or a single power law (SPL) with index of $0.80 \pm 0.16$. The local event rate densities of SN SBOs above $5\times 10^{42}$ $\rm erg\,s^{-1}$ are consistent for two models, i.e., $4.6 ^{+1.7}_{-1.3} \times 10^4$ and $4.9 ^{+1.9}_{-1.4} \times 10^4$ $\rm Gpc^{-3}\,yr^{-1}$ for BPL and SPL models, respectively. The number of fast X-ray transients of SN SBO origin can be significantly increased by the wide-field X-ray telescopes such as the Einstein Probe.

astro-ph.HE↗

Positivity-preserving and energy-dissipative finite difference schemes for the Fokker-Planck and Keller-Segel equations

In this work, we introduce semi-implicit or implicit finite difference schemes for the continuity equation with a gradient flow structure. Examples of such equations include the linear Fokker-Planck equation and the Keller-Segel equations. The two proposed schemes are first order accurate in time, explicitly solvable, and second order and fourth order accurate in space, which are obtained via finite difference implementation of the classical continuous finite element method. The fully discrete schemes are proven positivity-preserving and energy-dissipative: the second order scheme can achieve so unconditionally; the fourth order scheme only requires a mild time step and mesh size constraint. Furthermore, the fourth order scheme is the first high order spatial discretization that can achieve both positivity and energy decay properties, which is suitable for long time simulation and to obtain accurate steady state solutions.

math.NA↗

Implicit Regularization Effects of the Sobolev Norms in Image Processing

In this paper, we propose to use the general $L^2$-based Sobolev norms, i.e., $H^s$ norms where $s\in \mathbb{R}$, to measure the data discrepancy due to noise in image processing tasks that are formulated as optimization problems. As opposed to a popular trend of developing regularization methods, we emphasize that an implicit regularization effect can be achieved through the class of Sobolev norms as the data-fitting term. Specifically, we analyze that the implicit regularization comes from the weights that the $H^s$ norm imposes on different frequency contents of an underlying image. We further analyze the underlying noise assumption of using the Sobolev norm as the data-fitting term from a Bayesian perspective, build the connections with the Sobolev gradient-based methods and discuss the preconditioning effects on the convergence rate of the gradient descent algorithm, leading to a better understanding of functional spaces/metrics and the optimization process involved in image processing. Numerical results in full waveform inversion, image denoising and deblurring demonstrate the implicit regularization effects.

math.NA↗

An adaptive dynamical low rank method for the nonlinear Boltzmann equation

Efficient and accurate numerical approximation of the full Boltzmann equation has been a longstanding challenging problem in kinetic theory. This is mainly due to the high dimensionality of the problem and the complicated collision operator. In this work, we propose a highly efficient adaptive low rank method for the Boltzmann equation, concerning in particular the steady state computation. This method employs the fast Fourier spectral method (for the collision operator) and the dynamical low rank method to obtain computational efficiency. An adaptive strategy is introduced to incorporate the boundary information and control the computational rank in an appropriate way. Using a series of benchmark tests in 1D and 2D, we demonstrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed method in comparison to the full tensor grid approach.

math.NA↗