The Wigner representation of electromagnetic fields allows for a description of the forward propagating classical field as a quasi-particle distribution function evolving according to a kinetic equation - the Wigner-Moyal equation - formally equivalent, in different limits, to well known kinetic equations in plasma physics.
Thus, it provides a theoretical description which can be easily implemented with standard numerical techniques for particle simulations. I will describe the photon-in-cell algorithm and i will
present results from codes implementing this algorithm. Recent theoretical developments to generalize such formalism to include
backscattered radiation will also be discussed.
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