Two-Fluid Simulations of Collisionless Reconnection and the Z-Pinch using the Discontinuous Galerkin Method

Abstract

Summary form only given. Computational magnetohydrodynamics continues to be an important area of numerical plasma physics research. However, in many situations the magnetohydrodynamic model does not properly describe important plasma physics. This is particularly true for such phenomena as collisionless reconnection for which the Hall term and electron inertia become important. Furthermore, it is believed that electron inertia may generally be important in regions where the electrons are unmagnetized due to very low magnetic fields such as in the core of a Z-pinch. In this paper a multi-dimensional two-fluid algorithm using an advanced technique, the discontinuous Galerkin method, is developed and numerical results to such problems as the GEM challenge magnetic reconnection problem and the development of sausage mode instabilities in a Z-pinch are presented in the two-fluid framework