CBETor: a hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell code for cross-beam energy transfer simulation

Abstract

The parametric instability related to ion motion and the resulting cross-beam energy transfer are important aspects in the physics of inertial confinement fusion. The numerical simulation of the above physical problems still faces great technical challenges. This paper introduces a 2D hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell (PIC) code, CBETor. In this code, the motion of ions is described by the kinetic method, the motion of electrons is described by the simplified fluid method and the propagation of laser in plasma is described by solving the wave equation. We use CBETor and the popular fully kinetic PIC code EPOCH to simulate the stimulated Brillouin scattering and cross-beam energy transfer process, respectively. The physical images are in good agreement, but CBETor can significantly reduce the amount of calculation. With the premise of correctly simulating the ion dynamics, our hybrid-kinetic code can effectively suppress the noise of numerical simulation and significantly expand the simulation scale of physical problems. CBETor is very suitable for simulating the physical process dominated by ion motion in the interaction of medium intensity laser and underdense plasma.