Magneto-hydrodynamical nonlinear simulations of magnetically confined plasmas using smooth particle hydrodynamics (SPH)

Abstract

The successful application of techniques inspired in Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) to magnetohydrodynamical (MHD) nonlinear simulations of magnetically confined plasmas requires the previous solution to a number of challenging issues that are still not fully resolved, namely, the construction of precise, arbitrary initial conditions in complicated geometries, the formulation of adequate boundary conditions for the magnetic field, and the correct treatment of three-dimensional toroidal boundaries of the arbitrary shape. In this paper, we present an SPH implementation of the nonlinear MHD equations that include our proposed solution to these issues and test its performance on a broad selection of nonlinear MHD problems: (1) the propagation of circularly polarized Alfvén waves, (2) the occurrence of magnetic reconnection for a Harris current-sheet, and (3) the nonlinear MHD stability properties of various cylindrical pinches.