A Neural Score-Based Particle Method for the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau System
Plasma modeling is central to the design of nuclear fusion reactors, yet simulating collisional plasma kinetics from first principles remains a formidable computational challenge: the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau (VML) system describes six-dimensional phase-space transport under self-consistent electromagnetic fields together with the nonlinear, nonlocal Landau collision operator. A recent deterministic particle method for the full VML system estimates the velocity score function via the blob method, a kernel-based approximation with O(n^2) cost. In this work, we replace the blob score estimator with score-based transport modeling (SBTM), in which a neural network is trained on-the-fly via implicit score matching at O(n) cost. We prove that the approximated collision operator preserves momentum and kinetic energy, and dissipates an estimated entropy. We also characterize the unique global steady state of the VML system and its electrostatic reduction, providing the ground truth for numerical validation. On three canonical benchmarks -- Landau damping, two-stream instability, and Weibel instability -- SBTM is more accurate than the blob method, achieves correct long-time relaxation to Maxwellian equilibrium where the blob method fails, and delivers 50% faster runtime with 4times lower peak memory.
69cc64273f84a0971be66a5b
Vasily Ilin
69cc64273f84a0971be66a5c
Jingwei Hu
A Neural Score-Based Particle Method for the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau System
Plasma modeling is central to the design of nuclear fusion reactors, yet simulating collisional plasma kinetics from first principles remains a formidable computational challenge: the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau (VML) system describes six-dimensional phase-space transport under self-consistent electromagnetic fields together with the nonlinear, nonlocal Landau collision operator. A recent deterministic particle method for the full VML system estimates the velocity score function via the blob method, a kernel-based approximation with O(n^2) cost. In this work, we replace the blob score estimator with score-based transport modeling (SBTM), in which a neural network is trained on-the-fly via implicit score matching at O(n) cost. We prove that the approximated collision operator preserves momentum and kinetic energy, and dissipates an estimated entropy. We also characterize the unique global steady state of the VML system and its electrostatic reduction, providing the ground truth for numerical validation. On three canonical benchmarks -- Landau damping, two-stream instability, and Weibel instability -- SBTM is more accurate than the blob method, achieves correct long-time relaxation to Maxwellian equilibrium where the blob method fails, and delivers 50% faster runtime with 4times lower peak memory.
Score-based transport modeling replaces traditional blob methods in plasma simulations, offering improved accuracy and efficiency for solving the Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau system.
Vlasov-Maxwell-Landau system velocity score function blob method kernel-based approximation score-based transport modeling neural network implicit score matching collision operator momentum conservation kinetic energy dissipation entropy estimation global steady state Landau damping two-stream instability Weibel instability