The Dielectric Response of Plasmas with Arbitrary Gyrotropic Velocity Distributions

TL;DR

This paper introduces an advanced numerical tool, ALPS, for calculating the dielectric response of plasmas with arbitrary gyrotropic velocity distributions, improving modeling accuracy for plasma wave phenomena.

Contribution

The paper presents an updated version of ALPS that uses polynomial basis representation for better analytic continuation, enabling accurate modeling of plasma responses with arbitrary VDFs.

Findings

Demonstrates continuity between bi-Maxwellian and arbitrary VDF solutions.

Shows influence of VDF structure on wave polarization.

Evaluates wave emission and absorption characteristics.

Abstract

Hot and tenuous plasmas are frequently far from local thermodynamic equilibrium, necessitating sophisticated methods for determining the associated plasma dielectric tensor and normal mode response. The Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver (\texttt{alps}) is a numerical tool for calculating such responses of plasmas with arbitrary gyrotropic background velocity distribution functions (VDFs). In order to model weakly and moderately damped plasma waves accurately, we have updated to the code to use an improved analytic continuation enabled by a polynomial basis representation. We demonstrate the continuity of solutions to the linear Vlasov--Maxwell dispersion relation between bi-Maxwellian and arbitrary VDF representations and evaluate the influence of VDF structure on mode polarization and wave power emission and absorption.