Michel Mehrenberger

Guillaume Latu, Virginie Grandgirard, Jérémie Abiteboul et al.

Inaccurate description of the equilibrium can yield to spurious effects in gyrokinetic turbulence simulations. Also, the Vlasov solver and time integration schemes impact the conservation of physical quantities, especially in long-term simulations. Equilibrium and Vlasov solver have to be tuned in order to preserve constant states (equilibrium) and to provide good conservation property along time (mass to begin with). Several illustrative simple test cases are given to show typical spurious effects that one can observes for poor settings. We explain why Forward Semi-Lagrangian scheme bring us some benefits. Some toroidal and cylindrical GYSELA runs are shown that use FSL.

Bedros Afeyan, Fernando Casas, Nicolas Crouseilles et al.

KEEN waves are nonlinear, non-stationary, self-organized asymptotic states in Vlasov plasmas outside the scope or purview of linear theory constructs such as electron plasma waves or ion acoustic waves. Nonlinear stationary mode theories such as those leading to BGK modes also do not apply. The range in velocity that is strongly perturbed by KEEN waves depends on the amplitude and duration of the ponderomotive force used to drive them. Smaller amplitude drives create highly localized structures attempting to coalesce into KEEN waves. These cases have much more chaotic and intricate time histories than strongly driven ones. The narrow range in which one must maintain adequate velocity resolution in the weakly driven cases challenges xed grid numerical schemes. What is missing there is the capability of resolving locally in velocity while maintaining a coarse grid outside the highly perturbed region of phase space. We here report on a new Semi-Lagrangian Vlasov-Poisson solver based on conservative non-uniform cubic splines in velocity that tackles this problem head on. An additional feature of our approach is the use of a new high-order time-splitting scheme which allows much longer simulations per computational e ort. This is needed for low amplitude runs which take a long time to set up KEEN waves, if they are able to do so at all. The new code's performance is compared to uniform grid simulations and the advantages quanti ed. The birth pains associated with KEEN waves which are weakly driven is captured in these simulations. These techniques allow the e cient simulation of KEEN waves in multiple dimensions which will be tackled next as well as generalizations to Vlasov-Maxwell codes which are essential to understanding the impact of KEEN waves in practice.

David Coulette, Emmanuel Franck, Philippe Helluy et al.

We present a high order scheme for approximating kinetic equations with stiff relaxation. The objective is to provide efficient methods for solving the underlying system of conservation laws. The construction is based on several ingredients: (i) a high order implicit upwind Discontinuous Galerkin approximation of the kinetic equations with easy-to-solve triangular linear systems; (ii) a second order asymptotic-preserving time integration based on symmetry arguments; (iii) a palindromic composition of the second order method for achieving higher orders in time. The method is then tested at orders 2, 4 and 6. It is asymptotic-preserving with respect to the stiff relaxation and accepts high CFL numbers.

Jerome Guterl, Jean-Philippe Braeunig, Nicolas Crouseilles et al.

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.

Mehdi Badsi, Michel Mehrenberger, Laurent Navoret

We are interested in developing a numerical method for capturing stationary sheaths, that a plasma forms in contact with a metallic wall. This work is based on a bi-species (ion/electron) Vlasov-Amp{è}re model proposed in [3]. The main question addressed in this work is to know if classical numerical schemes can preserve stationary solutions with boundary conditions, since these solutions are not a priori conserved at the discrete level. In the context of high-order semi-Lagrangian method, due to their large stencil, interpolation near the boundary of the domain requires also a specific treatment.

Fernando Casas, Nicolas Crouseilles, Erwan Faou et al.

We consider the Vlasov-Poisson equation in a Hamiltonian framework and derive new time splitting methods based on the decomposition of the Hamiltonian functional between the kinetic and electric energy. Assuming smoothness of the solutions, we study the order conditions of such methods. It appears that these conditions are of Runge-Kutta-Nystr{ö}m type. In the one dimensional case, the order conditions can be further simplified, and efficient methods of order 6 with a reduced number of stages can be constructed. In the general case, high-order methods can also be constructed using explicit computations of commutators. Numerical results are performed and show the benefit of using high-order splitting schemes in that context. Complete and self-contained proofs of convergence results and rigorous error estimates are also given.