Demonstration of Metaplectic Geometrical Optics for Reduced Modeling of Plasma Waves

Abstract: The WKB approximation of geometrical optics is widely used in plasma physics, quantum mechanics and reduced wave modeling in general. However, it is well-known that the approximation breaks down at focal and turning points. In this work we present the first unsupervised numerical implementation of the recently developed metaplectic geometrical optics framework, which extends the applicability of geometrical optics beyond the limitations of WKB, such that the wave field remains finite at caustics. The implementation is in 1D and uses a combination of Gauss-Freud quadrature and barycentric rational function inter- and extrapolation to perform an inverse metaplectic transform numerically. The capabilities of the numerical implementation are demonstrated on Airy's and Weber's equation, which both have exact solutions to compare with. Finally, the implementation is applied to the plasma physics problem of linear conversion of X-mode to electron Bernstein waves at the upper hybrid layer and a comparison is made with results from fully kinetic particle-in-cell simulations. In all three applications we find good agreement between the exact results and the new reduced wave modeling paradigm of metaplectic geometrical optics.