On the integration of equations of motion for particle-in-cell codes

An area-preserving implementation of the 2nd order Runge–Kutta integration method for equations of motion is presented. For forces independent of velocity the scheme possesses the same numerical simplicity and stability as the leapfrog method, and is not implicit for forces which do depend on velocity. It can be therefore easily applied where the leapfrog method in general cannot. We discuss the stability of the new scheme and test its performance in calculations of particle motion in three cases of interest. First, in the ubiquitous and numerically demanding example of nonlinear interaction of particles with a propagating plane wave, second, in the case of particle motion in a static magnetic field and, third, in a nonlinear dissipative case leading to a limit cycle. We compare computed orbits with exact orbits and with results from the leapfrog and other low-order integration schemes. Of special interest is the role of intrinsic stochasticity introduced by time differencing, which can destroy orbits of an otherwise exactly integrable system and therefore constitutes a restriction on the applicability of an integration scheme in such a context [A. Friedman, S.P. Auerbach, J. Comput. Phys. 93 (1991) 171]. In particular, we show that for a plane wave the new scheme proposed herein can be reduced to a symmetric standard map. This leads to the nonlinear stability condition Δt ωB ⩽ 1, where Δt is the time step and ωB the particle bounce frequency.