  We study Landau damping in the 1+1D Vlasov-Poisson system using a
Fourier-Hermite spectral representation. We describe the propagation of free
energy in phase space using forwards and backwards propagating Hermite modes
recently developed for gyrokinetics [Schekochihin et al. (2014)]. The change in
the electric field corresponds to the net Hermite flux via a free energy
evolution equation. In linear Landau damping, decay in the electric field
corresponds to forward propagating Hermite modes; in nonlinear damping, the
initial decay is followed by a growth phase characterised by the generation of
backwards propagating Hermite modes by the nonlinear term. The free energy
content of the backwards propagating modes increases exponentially until
balancing that of the forward propagating modes. Thereafter there is no
systematic net Hermite flux, so the electric field cannot decay and the
nonlinearity effectively suppresses Landau damping. These simulations are
performed using the fully-spectral 5D gyrokinetics code SpectroGK [Parker et
al. 2014], modified to solve the 1+1D Vlasov-Poisson system. This captures
Landau damping via an iterated L\'enard-Bernstein collision operator or via
Hou-Li filtering in velocity space. Therefore the code is applicable even in
regimes where phase-mixing and filamentation are dominant.
