Year: 2007
Communications in Computational Physics, Vol. 2 (2007), Iss. 4 : pp. 684–722
Abstract
A novel numerical method, based on physical intuition, for particle-in-cell simulations of electromagnetic plasma microturbulence with fully kinetic ion and electron dynamics is presented. The method is based on the observation that, for low-frequency modes of interest [ω/ωci≪1, ω is the typical mode frequency and ωci is the ion cyclotron frequency] the impact of particles that have velocities larger than the resonant velocity, vr∼ω/kk (kk is the typical parallel wavenumber) is negligibly small (this is especially true for the electrons). Therefore it is natural to analytically segregate the electron response into an adiabatic response and a nonadiabatic response and to numerically resolve only the latter: this approach is termed the splitting scheme. However, the exact separation between adiabatic and nonadiabatic responses implies that a set of coupled, nonlinear elliptic equations has to be solved; in this paper an iterative technique based on the multigrid method is used to resolve the apparent numerical difficulty. It is shown that the splitting scheme allows for clean, noise-free simulations of electromagnetic drift waves and ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes. It is also shown that the advantage of noise-free kinetic simulations translates into better energy conservation properties.
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Journal Article Details
Publisher Name: Global Science Press
Language: English
DOI: https://doi.org/2007-CiCP-7923
Communications in Computational Physics, Vol. 2 (2007), Iss. 4 : pp. 684–722
Published online: 2007-01
AMS Subject Headings: Global Science Press
Copyright: COPYRIGHT: © Global Science Press
Pages: 39
Keywords: Plasma micro-turbulence particle-in-cell simulation multigrid solver.