Studies of parallel algorithms for the solution of a Fokker-Planck equation

The study of laser-created plasmas often requires the use of a kinetic model rather than a hydrodynamic one. This model change occurs, for example, in the hot spot formation in an ICF experiment or during the relaxation of colliding plasmas. When the gradients scalelengths or the size of a given system are not small compared to the characteristic mean-free-path, we have to deal with non-equilibrium situations, which can be described by the distribution functions of every species in the system. We present here a numerical method in plane or spherical 1-D geometry, for the solution of a Fokker-Planck equation that describes the evolution of stich functions in the phase space. The size and the time scale of kinetic simulations require the use of Massively Parallel Computers (MPP). We have adopted a message-passing strategy using Parallel Virtual Machine (PVM)