A conservative scheme for electromagnetic simulation of magnetized plasmas with kinetic electrons

Abstract: A conservative scheme has been formulated and verified for gyrokinetic particle simulations of electromagnetic waves and instabilities in magnetized plasmas. An electron continuity equation derived from drift kinetic equation is used to time advance electron density perturbation by using the perturbed mechanical flow calculated from the parallel vector potential, and the parallel vector potential is solved by using the perturbed canonical flow from the perturbed distribution function. In gyrokinetic particle simulations using this new scheme, shear Alfv\'en wave dispersion relation in shearless slab and continuum damping in sheared cylinder have been recovered. The new scheme overcomes the stringent requirement in conventional perturbative simulation method that perpendicular grid size needs to be as small as electron collisionless skin depth even for the long wavelength Alfv\'en waves. The new scheme also avoids the problem in conventional method that an unphysically large parallel electric field arises due to the inconsistency between electrostatic potential calculated from the perturbed density and vector potential calculated from the perturbed canonical flow. Finally, the gyrokinetic particle simulations of the Alfv\'en waves in sheared cylinder have superior numerical properties compared with the fluid simulations, which suffer from numerical difficulties associated with singular mode structures.