The FARSIGHT Vlasov-Poisson code

A forward semi-Lagrangian scheme called FARSIGHT is presented for collisonless electrostatic plasmas described by the 1D1V Vlasov-Poisson equations. The phase space distribution is represented by quadrilateral panels having a hierarchical tree structure, where each panel is a 3 × 3 particle grid that is tracked by 4th order Runge-Kutta time stepping. The electric field is expressed as a convolution integral of the charge density with a regularized kernel. The particles are remeshed at every time step using biquadratic interpolation on the panels and the panels are adaptively refined to resolve the phase space distribution. The electric field integral is discretized by the trapezoid rule and the discrete sums are computed by a GPU-accelerated barycentric Lagrange treecode. Numerical results are presented for weak and strong Landau damping, the two-stream instability, and halo formation in a mismatched thermal sheet beam. • Forward semi-Lagrangian method for Vlasov-Poisson system. • Adaptive mesh refinement and remeshing in phase space. • Regularized electric field kernel. • GPU-accelerated barycentric Lagrange treecode. • Landau damping, two-stream instability, ion beam in focusing channel.