Low-variance deviational simulation Monte Carlo

We present and discuss a particle simulation method for solving the Boltzmann equation which incorporates the variance reduction ideas presented in L. L. Baker and N. G. Hadjiconstantinou Physics of Fluids 17, 051703 2005 . The variance reduction, achieved by simulating only the deviation from equilibrium, results in a significant computational efficiency advantage for low speed flows compared to traditional particle methods such as the direct simulation Monte Carlo DSMC . More specifically, the proposed method can efficiently simulate arbitrarily small deviations from equilibrium e.g., low flow speed at a computational cost that does not scale with the magnitude of the deviation from equilibrium, while maintaining the basic algorithmic structure of DSMC. © 2007 American Institute of Physics. DOI: 10.1063/1.2717721