Visualization techniques in plasma numerical simulations

Abstract

Numerical simulations of plasma processes usually yield a huge amount of raw numerical data. Information about electric and magnetic fields and particle positions and velocities can be typically obtained. There are two major ways of elaborating these data. First of them is calledplasma diagnostics. We can calculate average values, variances, correlations of variables, etc. These results may be directly comparable with experiments and serve as the typical quantitative output of plasma simulations. The second possibility is theplasma visualization. The results are qualitative only, but serve as vivid display of phenomena in the plasma followed-up. An experience with visualizing electric and magnetic fields via Line Integral Convolution method is described in the first part of the paper. The LIC method serves for visualization of vector fields in two dimensional section of the three dimensional plasma. The field values can be known only in grid points of three-dimensional grid. The second part of the paper is devoted to the visualization techniques of the charged particle motion. The colour tint can be used for particle’s temperature representation. The motion can be visualized by a trace fading away with the distance from the particle. In this manner the impressive animations of the particle motion can be achieved.