Moment extract method for drift kinetic simulation of magnetized plasma

Abstract

A novel time integration method of the drift kinetic equation is proposed, where low order fluid moment equations including the lowest order terms for the dispersive Alfvén wave propagation are extracted from the electron drift kinetic equations. The moment extract method enables ones to implement an implicit solver for wave propagation by means of the operator splitting, while the kinetic part is solved explicitly. Numerical tests of the new scheme have verified stable and accurate time-integration of the drift kinetic equation and enabled to take a large time step size when the electron β value is smaller than the electron-to-ion mass ratio.