An adaptive and conservative low-rank IMEX solver for the hybrid ion Vlasov-Fokker-Planck and fluid electron system

Abstract: We present a macroscopically conservative, rank-adaptive method for solving a hybrid Vlasov-Fokker-Planck (VFP) equation in which the ions are treated kinetically, and the electrons are treated as a fluid. Solving this system poses several coupled computational challenges: the curse of dimensionality, conservation of macroscopic quantities, stiffness arising from the multiscale nature of the model, and structure preservation. To address these challenges, we combine several established methods, each targeting a specific difficulty, into a unified framework for solving this nonlinear system. Specifically, we employ the recent Reduced Augmentation Implicit Low-rank (RAIL) method for rank adaptivity in velocity space to combat the curse of dimensionality, high-order implicit-explicit time stepping to handle the multiscale stiffness, and the Local Macroscopic Conservative (LoMaC) procedure for conservative truncation of the solution. The RAIL and LoMaC methods are extended from Cartesian to cylindrical coordinates. The resulting framework accommodates implicit rank-adaptive time integration while remaining conservative and leveraging structure-preserving discretizations. We verify the scheme on a suite of test problems and simulate a standing shock to demonstrate the importance of conserving the macroscopic quantities.