Numerical study of vortices within a background vortex

This study aims to exploit the analogy of vortex dynamics in a two dimensional (2D) ideal fluid and 2D non-neutral plasma. Numerical simulations using contour dynamics with point insertion are conducted to study the dynamics of one or more vortices within a background vortex, and the results are compared with experiments using magnetized non-neutral electron plasmas confined in a Penning–Malmberg trap. This comparison is based on the isomorphism between the 2D Euler equations for ideal fluid and the 2D drift-Poisson equations for non-neutral plasma, where the fluid vorticity and stream function correspond to the plasma charge density and electric potential, respectively. The agreement and discrepancy between the simulation and experiment are observed and discussed.