A treecode algorithm for simulating electron dynamics in a Penning-Malmberg trap

摘要

A treecode algorithm is presented for computing the electrostatic potential and electric field in a system of charged particles. The algorithm is grid-free and with N particles it reduces the operation count to O(N log N), as opposed to O(N-2) which is required for direct summation of pairwise interactions. The key idea is to replace the particle-particle interactions by particle-cluster interactions which are evaluated using a Taylor approximation in Cartesian coordinates. The treecode is combined here with a boundary integral method to simulate electron dynamics in a Penning-Malmberg trap. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.