2025/03/29 by Jianyuan Xiao, Jian Liu, Xiao, Jianyuan +1
Physics and Astronomy · #Dust and Plasma Wave Phenomena #FOS: Physical sciences #Ionosphere and magnetosphere dynamics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2503.23112
openalex publication_date 2025/03/29 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a symplectic electromagnetic fully-kinetic particle-in-cell simulation of microinstabilities in plasma, using parameters from the Cyclone Base Case [Dimits, et al., Physics of Plasmas 7, 969 (2000)]. The results show that the growth rates of unstable modes, including ion temperature gradient (ITG), trapped electron mode (TEM), and kinetic ballooning mode (KBM), are consistent with those obtained from previous gyrokinetic models. Additionally, the \beta-stabilization of the ITG is reproduced. The analysis also reveals that the impact of the ion-electron mass ratio and the numerical speed of light on the growth rate of the most unstable modes is minimal. This suggests that the fully kinetic method offers a potential for reduced computational cost when investigating the physics of drift wave instabilities at relevant space-time scales.