Neural Networks for the Analysis of Traced Particles in Kinetic Plasma Simulations

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Paz, Gabriel Torralba, Bohdan, Artem, Niemiec, Jacek
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Paz, Gabriel Torralba
Bohdan, Artem
Niemiec, Jacek
author_facet Paz, Gabriel Torralba
Bohdan, Artem
Niemiec, Jacek
contents Cosmic-ray acceleration processes in astrophysical plasmas are often investigated with fully-kinetic or hybrid kinetic numerical simulations, which enable us to describe a detailed microphysics of particle energization mechanisms. Tracing of individual particles in such simulations is especially useful in this regard. However, visually inspecting particle trajectories introduces a significant amount of bias and uncertainty, making it challenging to pinpoint specific acceleration mechanisms. Here, we present a novel approach utilising neural networks to assist in the analysis of individual particle data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using the dataset from our recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of non-relativistic perpendicular shocks that consists of 252,000 electrons, each characterised by their position, momentum and electromagnetic field at particle's position, recorded in a time series of 1200 time steps. These electrons cross a region affected by the electrostatic Buneman instability, and a small percentage of them attain high energies. We perform classification, regression, and anomaly detection algorithms on the dataset by using a convolutional neural network, a multi-layer perceptron, and an autoencoder. Despite the noisy and imbalanced dataset, all methods demonstrate the capability to differentiate between thermal and accelerated electrons with remarkable accuracy. The proposed methodology may considerably simplify particle classification in large-scale PIC and hybrid simulations.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2501_17537
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Neural Networks for the Analysis of Traced Particles in Kinetic Plasma Simulations
Paz, Gabriel Torralba
Bohdan, Artem
Niemiec, Jacek
High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Computational Physics
Plasma Physics
Cosmic-ray acceleration processes in astrophysical plasmas are often investigated with fully-kinetic or hybrid kinetic numerical simulations, which enable us to describe a detailed microphysics of particle energization mechanisms. Tracing of individual particles in such simulations is especially useful in this regard. However, visually inspecting particle trajectories introduces a significant amount of bias and uncertainty, making it challenging to pinpoint specific acceleration mechanisms. Here, we present a novel approach utilising neural networks to assist in the analysis of individual particle data. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach using the dataset from our recent particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations of non-relativistic perpendicular shocks that consists of 252,000 electrons, each characterised by their position, momentum and electromagnetic field at particle's position, recorded in a time series of 1200 time steps. These electrons cross a region affected by the electrostatic Buneman instability, and a small percentage of them attain high energies. We perform classification, regression, and anomaly detection algorithms on the dataset by using a convolutional neural network, a multi-layer perceptron, and an autoencoder. Despite the noisy and imbalanced dataset, all methods demonstrate the capability to differentiate between thermal and accelerated electrons with remarkable accuracy. The proposed methodology may considerably simplify particle classification in large-scale PIC and hybrid simulations.
title Neural Networks for the Analysis of Traced Particles in Kinetic Plasma Simulations
topic High Energy Astrophysical Phenomena
Computational Physics
Plasma Physics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2501.17537