Overview

This book is dedicated to the study of charged particle interactions in space plasmas. These play a crucial role in many phenomena observed in space, such as auroras, solar winds, cosmic rays and many others. For the simulation, we used the PIC (Particle In Cell) method, considered to be the first method to have been developed historically for the simulation of the Vlasov Maxwell or Vlasov Poisson equations (coupling of a particle method for Vlasov and a mesh method for Poisson or Maxwell). The principle of the method is to discretize the distribution function by a set of macro-particles representing, at the initial instant, a realization of the probability law associated with the initial distribution function. This has enabled us to understand non-linear processes and basic microphysical processes in space plasmas, such as electrostatic thermal fluctuations, electrostatic instability and electron stationary waves (ESW).