Electromagnetic full-$f$ gyrokinetics in the tokamak edge with discontinuous Galerkin methods

Abstract

We present an energy-conserving discontinuous Galerkin scheme for the full-$f$ electromagnetic gyrokinetic system in the long-wavelength limit. We use the symplectic formulation and solve directly for $\partial A_{\parallel }/\partial t$, the inductive component of the parallel electric field, using a generalized Ohm's law derived directly from the gyrokinetic equation. Linear benchmarks are performed to verify the implementation and show that the scheme avoids the Ampère cancellation problem. We perform a nonlinear electromagnetic simulation in a helical open-field-line system as a rough model of the tokamak scrape-off layer using parameters from the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). This is the first published nonlinear electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulation on open field lines. Comparisons are made to a corresponding electrostatic simulation.

38 pages, 11 figures