| The aim of this paper is to describe the discretization of the Fokker-Planck-Landau (FPL) collision term in the isotropic case which models the self collision for the electrons when they are totally isotropized by heavy particles background such as ions. The discussion focus on schemes which could preserve positivity, mass, energy and Maxwellian equilibrium. First, we analyze in detail the popular Chang and Cooper method for this non-linear collision term: derivation, conservation and positivity properties. We show that some variants of this method, based on the drift-diffusion form of the FPL operator, could not be positive or could not conserve the energy. We present a new variant of the Chang and Cooper method derived from the Landau form that is both positive and conservative. We also propose two new alternatives and simpler schemes for the FPL operator which show that the Chang and Cooper method is not the only way to construct positive, energy conservative and equilibrium state preserving schemes for this operator. For all these schemes, we explain clearly the properties of conservation of the density and the energy, the positivity of the solution and the conservation of the equilibrium states, or their lack. The case of Maxwellian and Coulombian potentials are emphasized. |
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