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Volume 2, Issue 4
Fully Kinetic, Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Microturbulence

J. L. V. Lewandowski & L. E. Zakharov

Commun. Comput. Phys., 2 (2007), pp. 684-722.

Published online: 2007-02

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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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@Article{CiCP-2-684, author = {}, title = {Fully Kinetic, Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Microturbulence}, journal = {Communications in Computational Physics}, year = {2007}, volume = {2}, number = {4}, pages = {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.

}, issn = {1991-7120}, doi = {https://doi.org/}, url = {http://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/cicp/7923.html} }
TY - JOUR T1 - Fully Kinetic, Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Microturbulence JO - Communications in Computational Physics VL - 4 SP - 684 EP - 722 PY - 2007 DA - 2007/02 SN - 2 DO - http://doi.org/ UR - https://global-sci.org/intro/article_detail/cicp/7923.html KW - Plasma micro-turbulence, particle-in-cell simulation, multigrid solver. AB -

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.

J. L. V. Lewandowski & L. E. Zakharov. (2020). Fully Kinetic, Electromagnetic Particle-in-Cell Simulations of Plasma Microturbulence. Communications in Computational Physics. 2 (4). 684-722. doi:
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