Hybrid simulation of energetic particles interacting with magnetohydrodynamics using a slow manifold algorithm and GPU acceleration (Q2695564)

The physics of enegetic particles is an important area of plasma physics and their confinement is critical to the success of International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor and future fusion reactors. The hybrid method combining particle-in-cell and magnetohydrodynamics can be used to study the interaction between energetic particles and global plasma modes. In this paper, the authors introduce the M3D-C1-K code, which is developed based on the M3D-C1 finite element code solving the magnetohydrodynamics equations, with a newly developed kinetic module simulating energetic particles. The particle pushing is done using a new algorithm by applying the Boris pusher to the classical Pauli particles to simulate the slow-manifold of particle orbits, with long-term accuracy and fidelity. The particle pushing can be accelerated using GPUs with a significant speedup. The moments of the particles are calculated using the \(\delta f\) method, and are coupled into the magnetohydrodynamics simulation through pressure or current coupling schemes. Several linear simulations of magnetohydrodynamics modes driven by energetic particles have been conducted using M3D-C1-K with the \(\delta f\) method, including fishbone, toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes and reversed shear Alfvén eigenmodes. Good agreement with previous results from other eigenvalue, kinetic and hybrid codes have been achieved.