Computer simulation of plasma dynamics in open magnetic systems

The paper is devoted to the numerical simulation of formation of diamagnetic “bubble” in an open magnetic trap. This system makes possible to achieve the maximal plasma pressure for the effective plasma heating and confinement. We consider axially symmetrical magnetic trap with injection and subsequent ionization of neutral particle beams. The simulations of the ion beam - plasma interaction are based on a two-dimensional hybrid model for the quasi-neutral collisionless plasma, where the ions are described kinetically, and the electrons are considered as a fluid. We use the particle-in-cells method (PIC) in the cylindrical coordinates and the finite-difference schemes for half-step shifted grids. Numerical experiments for plasma and ion beam parameters in accordance with the parameters of laboratory experiments required considerable computational resources and a parallel version of the developed algorithm. The parallelization we use is based on the domain-particle decomposition, where each processor core is responsible for its sub-domain grid and the corresponding particle portion. The results of numerical modeling of the plasma dynamics in the diamagnetic regime of the open plasma trap are presented.