A Three-Dimensional Plasma–Neutral Gas–Fluid Code

Abstract

Macroscopic dynamics of interacting hot plasmas and partially ionized gases can be studied by means of fluid simulations. Important applications are the Earth's magnetosphere–ionosphere–thermosphere system and the interaction of solar photospheric and coronal plasma. We developed a quasi-neutral compressible 3D fluid code that integrates the closed set of balance equations for the plasma fluid, the neutral gas, and the magnetic flux. We derived a quite general set of dimensionless balance equations taking into account mass, momentum and energy conservation. For a number of applications in partially ionized space plasmas the equations can be reduced to numerically tractable equations. The kernel of the numerical algorithm is the leapfrog method which is of second-order accuracy in space and time. The code was tested by simulating characteristic wave and instability phenomena.