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The interpenetration of counterstreaming plasmas is an important phenomenon in several application areas, such as astrophysical flows, design of controlled fusion devices, and laser–induced plasma experiments. Multispecies “single-fluid” codes are unable to model this phenomenon due to the single velocity representation for all the species/fluids. Kinetic codes, though capable of modeling interpenetration, are computationally prohibitive for at-scale simulations. In this paper, we propose a multifluid model that solves the fluid equations for each ion fluid or stream. This allows distinct flows that interact with each other through electrostatic and collisional forces. We introduce and describe our code, EUCLID, that uses a conservative finite-difference formulation to discretize the governing equations in space. The 5th-order Monotonicity-Preserving WENO scheme is used for the upwind approximation of the hyperbolic flux, and the explicit 4th-order Runge–Kutta scheme is used for time integration. The code is verified for several benchmark cases and manufactured solutions. We simulate one- and two-dimensional interactions of counterstreaming plasmas in vacuum as well as in the presence of gas fill, where the setups are representative of laser-induced plasma experiments.

The parallel electron heat transport in a weakly collisional regime can be represented in the framework of the Landau-fluid model (Hammett et al., 1990). Practical implementation of Landau-fluid transport has become possible due to the recent invention of an efficient non-spectral method for the non-local closure operators (Dimits et al., 2014). Here the implementation of a Landau-fluid based model for the parallel plasma transport is described, and the model is tested for different collisionality regimes against Fokker–Planck simulations. The new method appears to represent the weakly collisional electron transport more accurately than the conventional flux-limiter based models, on the other hand it is computationally efficient enough to be incorporated in comprehensive edge plasma simulations.

The coupled fluid plasma and kinetic neutral physics equations are analyzed through theory and simulation of benchmark cases. It is shown that coupling methods that do not treat the coupling rates implicitly are restricted to short time steps for stability. Fast charge exchange, ionization and recombination coupling rates exist, even after constraining the solution by requiring that the neutrals are at equilibrium. For explicit coupling, the present implementation of Monte Carlo correlated sampling techniques does not allow for complete convergence in slab geometry. For the benchmark case, residuals decay with particle number and increase with grid size, indicating that they scale in a manner that is similar to the theoretical prediction for nonlinear bias error. Progress is reported on implementation of a fully implicit Jacobian-free Newton–Krylov coupling scheme. The present block Jacobi preconditioning method is still sensitive to time step and methods that better precondition the coupled system are under investigation. Keywords: Divertor modeling, Charge exchange, Ionization, Recombination, Implicit, Newton–Krylov, UEDGE, DEGAS2, EIRENE, SOLPS, MSC: 00-01, 99-00

The extension of Langevin-equation Monte-Carlo algorithms for Coulomb collisions from the conventional Euler-Maruyama time integration to the next higher order of accuracy, the Milstein scheme, has been developed, implemented, and tested. This extension proceeds via a formulation of the angular scattering directly as stochastic differential equations in the fixed-frame spherical-coordinate velocity variables. Results from the numerical implementation show the expected improvement [O(@Dt) vs. O(@Dt^1^/^2)] in the strong convergence rate both for the speed |v| and angular components of the scattering. An important result is that this improved convergence is achieved for the angular component of the scattering if and only if the ''area-integral'' terms in the Milstein scheme are included. The resulting Milstein scheme is of value as a step towards algorithms with both improved accuracy and efficiency. These include both algorithms with improved convergence in the averages (weak convergence) and multi-time-level schemes. The latter have been shown to give a greatly reduced cost for a given overall error level when compared with conventional Monte-Carlo schemes, and their performance is improved considerably when the Milstein algorithm is used for the underlying time advance versus the Euler-Maruyama algorithm. A new method for sampling the area integrals is given which is a simplification of an earlier direct method and which retains high accuracy. This method, while being useful in its own right because of its relative simplicity, is also expected to considerably reduce the computational requirements for the direct conditional sampling of the area integrals that is needed for adaptive strong integration.

Both binary and grid-based Langevin equations models for Coulomb collisions are used in particle simulation of plasmas. We introduce a variant of the conventional binary collision algorithm for performing Coulomb collisions. In this algorithm particles in a configuration space cell are not paired for collisions. Instead, for every test particle in the cell, a unique field particle is defined by randomly sampling a velocity distribution defined on the grid by accumulating moments of the particle distribution function(s). The test and field particle pair then undergoes a collision using the standard methodology for binary collisions. The performance of the new algorithm is illustrated in example computations and compared to a drag-diffusion Langevin equations algorithm. The grid-based algorithms do not conserve momentum and energy, although with good particle statistics the non-conservation is relatively small. Conservation can be restored after collisions using a shift and scaling of the momenta. The comparative merits of the new algorithm are discussed.

We investigate the accuracy of and assumptions underlying the numerical binary Monte Carlo collision operator due to Nanbu [K. Nanbu, Phys. Rev. E 55 (1997) 4642]. The numerical experiments that resulted in the parameterization of the collision kernel used in Nanbu's operator are argued to be an approximate realization of the Coulomb-Lorentz pitch-angle scattering process, for which an analytical solution for the collision kernel is available. It is demonstrated empirically that Nanbu's collision operator quite accurately recovers the effects of Coulomb-Lorentz pitch-angle collisions, or processes that approximate these (such interspecies Coulomb collisions with very small mass ratio) even for very large values of the collisional time step. An investigation of the analytical solution shows that Nanbu's parameterized kernel is highly accurate for small values of the normalized collision time step, but loses some of its accuracy for larger values of the time step. Careful numerical and analytical investigations are presented, which show that the time dependence of the relaxation of a temperature anisotropy by Coulomb-Lorentz collisions has a richer structure than previously thought, and is not accurately represented by an exponential decay with a single decay rate. Finally, a practical collision algorithm is proposed that for small-mass-ratio interspecies Coulomb collisions improves on the accuracy of Nanbu's algorithm.

The interactions of charged particles in a plasma are governed by long-range Coulomb collision. We compare two widely used Monte Carlo models for Coulomb collisions. One was developed by Takizuka and Abe in 1977, the other was developed by Nanbu in 1997. We perform deterministic and statistical error analysis with respect to particle number and time step. The two models produce similar stochastic errors, but Nanbu's model gives smaller time step errors. Error comparisons between these two methods are presented.

In this paper, a numerical instability first observed in a 2D electrostatic gyrokinetic code is described. The instability should also be present in some form in many versons of particle-in-cell simulation codes that employ guiding center drifts. A perturbation analysis of the instability is given and its results agree quantitatively with the observations from the gyrokinetic code in all respects. The basic mechanism is a false divergence of the E × B flow caused by the interpolation between the grid and the particles as coupled with the specific numerical method for calculating E - ??. Stability or instability depends in detail on the specific choice of particle interpolation method and field method. One common interpolation method, subtracted dipole, is stable. Other commonly used interpolation methods, linear and quadratic, are unstable when combined with a finite difference for the electric field. Linear and quadratic interpolation can be rendered stable if combined with another method for the electric field, the analytic differential of the interpolated potential.