  In this paper, we propose a semi-Lagrangian discontinuous Galerkin method
coupled with Runge-Kutta exponential integrators (SLDG-RKEI) for nonlinear
Vlasov dynamics. The commutator-free Runge-Kutta (RK) exponential integrators
(EI) were proposed by Celledoni, et al. (FGCS, 2003). In the nonlinear
transport setting, the RKEI can be used to decompose the evolution of the
nonlinear transport into a composition of a sequence of linearized dynamics.
The resulting linearized transport equations can be solved by the
semi-Lagrangian (SL) discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method proposed in Cai, et al.
(JSC, 2017). The proposed method can achieve high order spatial accuracy via
the SLDG framework, and high order temporal accuracy via the RK EI. Due to the
SL nature, the proposed SLDG-RKEI method is not subject to the CFL condition,
thus they have the potential in using larger time-stepping sizes than those in
the Eulerian approach. Inheriting advantages from the SLDG method, the proposed
SLDG-RKEI schemes are mass conservative, positivity-preserving, have no
dimensional splitting error, perform well in resolving complex solution
structures, and can be evolved with adaptive time-stepping sizes. We show the
performance of the SLDG-RKEI algorithm by classical test problems for the
nonlinear Vlasov-Poisson system, as well as the Guiding center Vlasov model.
Though that it is not our focus of this paper to explore the SLDG-RKEI scheme
for nonlinear hyperbolic conservation laws that develop shocks, we show some
preliminary results on schemes' performance on the Burgers' equation.
