A Discontinuous Galerkin Method for Ideal Two-Fluid Plasma Equations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a high-order discontinuous Galerkin numerical method for simulating ideal two-fluid plasma equations, demonstrating its accuracy and versatility through various benchmark tests and potential for extension to complex geometries.

Contribution

It presents a novel high-order discontinuous Galerkin approach for two-fluid plasma equations, including error control and applicability to arbitrary geometries and 3D simulations.

Findings

Accurate simulation of dispersive electron acoustic pulses.

Successful benchmarking against analytical and existing numerical solutions.

Potential for extension to complex geometries and three-dimensional problems.

Abstract

A discontinuous Galerkin method for the ideal 5 moment two-fluid plasma system is presented. The method uses a second or third order discontinuous Galerkin spatial discretization and a third order TVD Runge-Kutta time stepping scheme. The method is benchmarked against an analytic solution of a dispersive electron acoustic square pulse as well as the two-fluid electromagnetic shock and existing numerical solutions to the GEM challenge magnetic reconnection problem. The algorithm can be generalized to arbitrary geometries and three dimensions. An approach to maintaining small gauge errors based on error propagation is suggested.