High fidelity simulations of the multi-species Vlasov equation in the electro-static, collisional-less limit

Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, vol. 67, pp. 025011

Abstract

Abstract The accurate prediction of occurrence and strength of kinetic instabilities in plasmas remains a significant challenge in nuclear fusion research. To accurately capture the plasma’s dynamics one is required to solve the Vlasov equation for several species which, however, comes with a number of challenges as high dimensionality of the model as well as turbulence and development of fine but relevant structures in the distribution function. The predominantly employed Particle-in-Cell (PIC) method often lacks the accuracy to resolve the dynamics correctly, which can only be remedied by going to higher resolutions but at a prohibitorily high cost due to the high-dimensionality. Thus in this work we discuss the usage of the numerical flow iteration (NuFI) as high fidelity approach, in contrast to e.g. PIC or grid-based approaches, to solve the multi-species Vlasov equation in modes leading to kinetic instabilities.

Authors 4

1. Rostislav‐Paul Wilhelm Aachen Applied and Computational Mathematics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Applied and Computational Mathematics, RWTH Aachen University, Schinkelstraße 2, 52062 Aachen, Germany

2. Jan Eifert Aachen Applied and Computational Mathematics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Applied and Computational Mathematics, RWTH Aachen University, Schinkelstraße 2, 52062 Aachen, Germany

3. Manuel Torrilhon Aachen Applied and Computational Mathematics

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   Applied and Computational Mathematics, RWTH Aachen University, Schinkelstraße 2, 52062 Aachen, Germany

4. Fabian Orland Aachen IT centre

   RWTH Aachen University

   Affiliation as printed

   IT Center, RWTH Aachen University, Kopernikusstraße 6, 52074 Aachen, Germany