Test of some numerical limiters for the conservative PSM scheme for 4D Drift-Kinetic simulations

TL;DR

This paper evaluates numerical limiters for the conservative PSM scheme in 4D drift-kinetic plasma simulations, aiming to improve robustness and accuracy in modeling magnetized plasmas relevant to ITER.

Contribution

It introduces a Hermite formulation of the conservative PSM scheme and tests numerical limiters to enhance robustness in 4D drift-kinetic simulations.

Findings

Limiters reduce spurious oscillations in simulations

Hermite formulation offers a flexible implementation

Enhanced robustness for 4D plasma models

Abstract

The purpose of this work is simulation of magnetised plasmas in the ITER project framework. In this context, Vlasov-Poisson like models are used to simulate core turbulence in the tokamak in a toroidal geometry. This leads to heavy simulation because a 6D dimensional problem has to be solved, 3D in space and 3D in velocity. The model is reduced to a 5D gyrokinetic model, taking advantage of the particular motion of particles due to the presence of a strong magnetic field. However, accurate schemes, parallel algorithms need to be designed to bear these simulations. This paper describes a Hermite formulation of the conservative PSM scheme which is very generic and allows to implement different semi-Lagrangian schemes. We also test and propose numerical limiters which should improve the robustness of the simulations by diminishing spurious oscillations. We only consider here the 4D drift-kinetic model which is the backbone of the 5D gyrokinetic models and relevant to build a robust and accurate numerical method.