Interactive Spatiotemporal Visualization of Phase Space Particle Trajectories Using Distance Plots

Abstract

The distance plot (or unthresholded recurrence plot) has been shown to be a useful tool for analyzing spatiotemporal patterns in high-dimensional phase space trajectories. We incorporate this technique into an interactive visualization with multiple linked phase plots, and extend the distance plot to also visualize marker particle weights from particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations together with the phase space trajectories. By linking the distance plot with phase plots, one can more easily investigate the spatiotemporal patterns, and by extending the plot to visualize particle weights in conjunction with the phase space trajectories, the visualization better supports the needs of domain experts studying particle-in-cell simulations. We demonstrate our resulting visualization design using particles from an XGC Tokamak fusion simulation.