Multigrid Particle-in-cell Simulations of Plasma Microturbulence
Author: J.L.V. Lewandowski
Date of PPPL Report: June 2003
Published in: Physics of Plasmas 10 (August 2003) Issue 8, 3204-3211
A new scheme to accurately retain kinetic electron effects in particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations for the case of electrostatic drift waves is presented. The splitting scheme, which is based on exact separation between adiabatic and onadiabatic electron responses, is shown to yield more accurate linear growth rates than the standard delta-f scheme. The linear and nonlinear elliptic problems that arise in the splitting scheme are solved using a multi-grid solver. The multi-grid particle-in-cell approach offers an attractive path, both from the physics and numerical points of view, to simulate kinetic electron dynamics in global toroidal plasmas.