The field reversed configuration (FRC), such as studied in the C-2W experiment at TAE Technologies, is an attractive candidate for realizing a nuclear fusion reactor. In an FRC, kinetic ion effects play the majority role in macroscopic stability, which allows global stability studies to make use of fluid-kinetic hybrid (also referred to as Ohm's law) models wherein ions are treated kinetically while electrons are treated as a fluid. The development and validation of such a hybrid particle-in-cell algorithm in the Exascale Computing Project code WarpX are reported here. Implementation of this model in the WarpX framework benefits from the numerical efficiency of WarpX as well as its scalability on large HPC systems and portability to different architectures. Performance benchmarks of the new algorithm for large, 3-dimensional, full device simulations from the Perlmutter supercomputer are presented. Results of a series of FRC simulations are discussed in which the impact of two-fluid effects on the tilt-mode growth rate was studied. It was observed that, in agreement with previous Hall-MHD studies, two-fluid effects have a stabilizing impact on the tilt mode.
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December 2023
Research Article|
December 19 2023
Accelerated kinetic model for global macro stability studies of high-beta fusion reactors
Special Collection:
Papers from the 2023 Sherwood Fusion Theory Conference
R. E. Groenewald
;
R. E. Groenewald
a)
(Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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A. Veksler
;
A. Veksler
(Data curation, Formal analysis, Validation, Visualization, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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F. Ceccherini
;
F. Ceccherini
(Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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A. Necas
;
A. Necas
(Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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B. S. Nicks
;
B. S. Nicks
(Data curation, Formal analysis, Software, Validation, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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D. C. Barnes
;
D. C. Barnes
(Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Writing – review & editing)
2
Coronado Consulting
, Lamy, New Mexico 87540, USA
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T. Tajima
;
T. Tajima
(Funding acquisition, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
3
University of California at Irvine
, Irvine, California 92697, USA
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S. A. Dettrick
S. A. Dettrick
(Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing)
1
TAE Technologies Inc.
, Foothill Ranch, California 92610, USA
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Phys. Plasmas 30, 122508 (2023)
Article history
Received:
September 26 2023
Accepted:
December 03 2023
Citation
R. E. Groenewald, A. Veksler, F. Ceccherini, A. Necas, B. S. Nicks, D. C. Barnes, T. Tajima, S. A. Dettrick; Accelerated kinetic model for global macro stability studies of high-beta fusion reactors. Phys. Plasmas 1 December 2023; 30 (12): 122508. https://doi.org/10.1063/5.0178288
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