PIC methods in astrophysics: Simulations of relativistic jets and kinetic physics in astrophysical systems

Understand

The Particle-In-Cell (PIC) method has been developed by Oscar Buneman, Charles Birdsall, Roger W.

• Hockney, and John Dawson in the 1950s and, with the advances of computing power, has been further developed for several fields such as astrophysical, magnetospheric as well as solar plasmas and recently also for atmospheric and laser-plasma physics.
• Currently more than 15 semi-public PIC codes are available which we discuss in this review.
• Its applications have grown extensively with increasing computing power available on high performance computing facilities around the world.