ALLIANCE: Spectral solver for kinetic plasma turbulence

TL;DR

ALLIANCE is a spectral solver designed for four-dimensional electromagnetic drift-kinetic equations, enabling detailed study of magnetized plasma turbulence at ion-scale and larger, with efficient parallel computation.

Contribution

It introduces a new spectral Fourier-Laguerre-Hermite based solver for kinetic plasma turbulence, combining nonlinear pseudo-spectral methods with parallelization.

Findings

Validated against benchmark tests

Demonstrated efficient parallel performance

Suitable for astrophysical plasma turbulence studies

Abstract

The ALLIANCE code is developed to solve a new set of four-dimensional electromagnetic drift-kinetic equations in slab geometry [J. Plasma Phys. 88 905880117 (2022)]. The nonlinear equations are useful for the study of magnetized plasma systems at scales comparable to, or larger than the ion gyroradius. In particular, it is suited for the study the kinetic turbulent cascade in astrophysical plasma, while preserving finite Larmor radius effects at the fluid-kinetic transition. The equations solved are in spectral Fourier-Laguerre-Hermite form, a pseudo-spectral approach is used for the nonlinear terms, and the code is parallelised over multiple directions. After a presentation of the code, validation runs are shown, and benchmarks for serial and parallel computations are presented.