Many applications require reliable numerical simulations of realistic set-ups e.g. plasma physics. This book gives a short introduction into kinetic models of gas mixtures describing the time evolution of rarefied gases and plasmas. Recently developed models are presented which extend existing literature by including more physical phenomena. We develop a numerical scheme for these more elaborated equations. The scheme is proven to maintain the physical properties of the models at the discrete level. We show several numerical test cases inspired by physical experiments.

Along with finite differences and finite elements, spectral methods are one of the three main methodologies for solving partial differential equations on computers. This book provides a detailed presentation of basic spectral algorithms, as well as a systematical presentation of basic convergence theory and error analysis for spectral methods. Readers of this book will be exposed to a unified framework for designing and analyzing spectral algorithms for a variety of problems, including in particular high-order differential equations and problems in unbounded domains. The book contains a large number of figures which are designed to illustrate various concepts stressed in the book. A set of basic matlab codes has been made available online to help the readers to develop their own spectral codes for their specific applications.