A fully implicit, scalable, conservative nonlinear relativistic Fokker-Planck 0D-2P solver for runaway electrons

DOI10.1016/J.CPC.2020.107361arXiv1902.10241MaRDI QIDQ6040784

W. T. Taitano, Don Daniel, Luis Chacón

Publication date: 22 May 2023

Published in: Computer Physics Communications (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: Upon application of a sufficiently strong electric field, electrons break away from thermal equilibrium and approach relativistic speeds. These highly energetic runaway electrons (MeV) play a significant role in tokamak disruption physics, and therefore their accurate understanding is essential to develop reliable mitigation strategies. For this purpose, we have developed a fully implicit solver for the 0D-2P (i.e., including two momenta coordinates) relativistic nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation (rFP). As in earlier implicit rFP studies (NORSE, CQL3D), electron-ion interactions are modeled using the Lorentz operator, and synchrotron damping using the Abraham-Lorentz-Dirac reaction term. However, our implementation improves on these earlier studies by 1) ensuring exact conservation properties for electron collisions, 2) strictly preserving positivity, and 3) being scalable algorithmically and in parallel. Key to our proposed approach is an efficient multigrid preconditioner for the linearized rFP equation, a multigrid elliptic solver for the Braams-Karney potentials [Braams and Karney, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 16 (1987)], and a novel adaptive technique to determine the associated boundary values. We verify the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed scheme with numerical results ranging from small electric-field electrical conductivity measurements to the accurate reproduction of runaway tail dynamics when strong electric fields are applied.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.10241

zbMATH Keywords

Anderson accelerationrunaway electronsadaptive potential boundariesfully implicit solvermultigrid-preconditioned GMRESrelativistic-Fokker-Planckstrict conservation properties

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Optics, electromagnetic theory (78-XX) Statistical mechanics, structure of matter (82-XX)

Cites Work

• Unnamed Item
• Unnamed Item
• A mass, momentum, and energy conserving, fully implicit, scalable algorithm for the multi-dimensional, multi-species Rosenbluth-Fokker-Planck equation
• NORSE: a solver for the relativistic non-linear Fokker-Planck equation for electrons in a homogeneous plasma
• An implicit energy-conservative 2D Fokker-Planck algorithm. II: Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov solver
• Anderson Acceleration for Fixed-Point Iterations
• Fokker-Planck Equation for an Inverse-Square Force
• GMRES: A Generalized Minimal Residual Algorithm for Solving Nonsymmetric Linear Systems
• Curvature-compensated convective transport: SMART, A new boundedness- preserving transport algorithm
• Iterative Procedures for Nonlinear Integral Equations
• Theory of Tokamak Transport

Related Items (5)

An asymptotic-preserving 2D-2P relativistic drift-kinetic-equation solver for runaway electron simulations in axisymmetric tokamaks ⋮ A mass-energy-conserving discontinuous Galerkin scheme for the isotropic multispecies Rosenbluth-Fokker-Planck equation ⋮ DREAM: a fluid-kinetic framework for tokamak disruption runaway electron simulations ⋮ Nonlinear Fokker-Planck collision operator in Rosenbluth form for gyrokinetic simulations using discontinuous Galerkin method ⋮ Scalable implicit solvers with dynamic mesh adaptation for a relativistic drift-kinetic Fokker-Planck-Boltzmann model

This page was built for publication: A fully implicit, scalable, conservative nonlinear relativistic Fokker-Planck 0D-2P solver for runaway electrons