AstroGK: Astrophysical gyrokinetics code

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThe gyrokinetic simulation code AstroGK is developed to study fundamental aspects of kinetic plasmas and for applications mainly to astrophysical problems. AstroGK is an Eulerian slab code that solves the electromagnetic gyrokinetic-Maxwell equations in five-dimensional phase space, and is derived from the existing gyrokinetics code GS2 by removing magnetic geometry effects. Algorithms used in the code are described. The code is benchmarked using linear and nonlinear problems. Serial and parallel performance scalings are also presented.

Electron and Ion Heating During Magnetic Reconnection in Weakly Collisional Plasmas

“…We initialize the system by a tearing unstable magnetic field configuration (see [9,10] for details). The equilibrium magnetic field profile is…”

“…(S h (x) is a shape function to enforce periodicity [9].) A eq is generated by the electron parallel current to satisfy the parallel Ampère's law.…”

“…AstroGK [9]. The code employs a pseudo-spectral algorithm for the spatial coordinates (x, y), and Gaussian quadrature for velocity space integrals.…”

“…In this paper, we present gyrokinetic simulations of magnetic reconnection using AstroGK [9]. We follow [10] to setup a tearing instability configuration, and extend it to the nonlinear regime.…”

Zero-Turbulence Manifold in a Toroidal Plasma

“…We now test this idea by calculating N max for linear ITG-PVG-driven transient perturbations in a slab, using the code AstroGK [29] to solve the linearised gyrokinetic equation, as done in Ref. [10].…”