2022/10/09 by Zhixin Lu, Lu, Zhixin, Guo Meng +7 · 1 citation
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.2210.04354
openalex publication_date 2022/10/09 · openalex created_date 2022/10/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In this work, we focus on the development of the particle-in-cell scheme and the application to the studies of Alfvén waves and energetic particle physics in tokamak plasmas. The δf and full f schemes are formulated on the same footing adopting mixed variables and the pullback scheme for electromagnetic problems. The TRIMEG-GKX code [Lu et al. J. Comput. Phys. 440 (2021) 110384] has been upgraded using cubic spline finite elements and full f and δf schemes. The EP-driven TAE has been simulated for the ITPA-TAE case featured by a small electron skin depth ∼ 1.18×10-3 \rm m, which is a challenging parameter regime of electromagnetic simulations, especially for the full f model. The simulation results using the δf scheme are in good agreement with previous work. Excellent performance of the mixed variable/pullback scheme has been observed for both full f and δf schemes. Simulations with mixed full f EPs and δf electrons and thermal ions demonstrate the good features of this novel scheme in mitigating the noise level. The full f scheme is a natural choice for EP physics studies which allows a large variation of EP profiles and distributions in velocity space, providing a powerful tool for kinetic studies using realistic experimental distributions related to intermittent and transient plasma activities.