Numerical Simulation of Plasma Edge Turbulence Due to E×B Flow Velocity Shear

Abstract

A numerical code is used to study the nonlinear evolution of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, and the existence and time evolution of a charge separation with the self-consistent electric field at a plasma edge. Both ions and electrons are described by gyrokinetic equations that include the ions finite Larmor radius correction and the polarization drift. We present results for the case where the plasma layer is two-dimensional, and the magnetic field makes an angle θ very close to the normal to the plane of the plasma. At θ = 88.5°, the nonlinear evolution of the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability shows a spectrum which is turbulent and is dominated by higher harmonics, saturates at low level and has little effect on the electrons and ions initial equilibrium density profiles. At an angle of the magnetic field closer to 90°, when the component of the motion of the electrons along the magnetic field decreases, the behavior is in accordance with some basic physics associated with the set of equations describing the behavior of a guiding center plasma in a strong magnetic field, namely the energy condensing in the lowest k modes (inverse cascades). The results show the sensitivity of the turbulent spectrum to the motion of the electrons along magnetic field lines. In particular, we study the effect of different algorithms to compute this sensitive electrons motion, and their effect on the turbulent spectrum. We show that Eulerian Vlasov codes associated with cubic spline interpolations perform favorably when compared to other methods.