Three-dimensional hybrid numerical tool for collisionless plasma modeling

Abstract

Abstract Recent laser-produced plasmas experiments open up new opportunities for the so-called laboratory astrophysics, allowing observation and studying a number of fundamental physical processes relevant to magnetized plasmas, such as thermo-magnetic instabilities leading to magnetic field generation, magnetic reconnection, collisionless shocks. In order to supplement those experiments with full-scale numerical simulations we develop a code AKA52 (Arbitrary-Kinetic-Algorithm) implementing a hybrid model that includes the dynamics of magnetic fields: advection by the ion flow and Hall effect, magnetic field generation by the Biermann battery effect and Weibel instability. The fully-parallelized high-performance hybrid algorithm includes Particle-in-Cell (PIC) formalism for ions and a 10-moment fluid model for electrons that are described by density, bulk velocity and the six-component pressure tensor evolution equation. Laser-plasma interaction is simulated by means of an ablation operator which imitates laser ionization and heating at critical density surface. As an example, we chose a problem of plasma expansion in the externally applied magnetic field perpendicular to the flow that is related to a number of recent laser-plasma experiments.