Radio Frequency Field Calculations for Plasma Heating Simulations in VASIMR

Details Radio Frequency Field Calculations for Plasma Heating Simulations in VASIMR Radio Frequency Field Calculations for Plasma Heating Simulations in VASIMR

Jan 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002iaf..confe.825i&link_type=abstract

IAF abstracts, 34th COSPAR Scientific Assembly, The Second World Space Congress, held 10-19 October, 2002 in Houston, TX, USA.,

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(VASIMR)1 is plasma heating by ion-cyclotron RF heating (ICRF). Mathematical simulation helps to design an ICRF antenna, i.e. make maximal absorption of RF power into the plasma in the resonance area. Another goal of a particle simulation is design of a magnetic nozzle and optimize the performance of VASIMR2. field in the plasma, 2) ion density and velocity, 3) ion-cyclotron radio-frequency electromagnetic field. The assumptions of quasineutral and collisionless plasma are based on the range of operating VASIMR parameters. Carlo simulations for systems of million of particles in a reasonable time and without the need for a powerful supercomputer. The particle to grid weighting method is used for calculating the ion density, which is used for recalculation of the electric potential and RF field. dimensional problem to a weighted sum over two-dimensional solutions. Absorption is introduced in the cold plasma model by adding an imaginary collision frequency to the RF driven frequency, which is equivalent to adding an imaginary particle mass in the dielectric tensor elements. static and RF fields using the VASIMR code2. The VASIMR and EMIR codes are then iterated to estimate the ICRF effects on the plasma density. The iteration is performed by calculating the RF fields with the EMIR code, and using these fields to follow nonlinear ion trajectories with the VASIMR code on the gyro-frequency time scale. The ion trajectories are used to generate RF power absorption values and a density input for the next EMIR calculation. The codes are iterated until the density profile becomes reasonably stable, then the collisional absorption parameter in the EMIR code is adjusted and the iteration is continued until the power deposited by the RF system matches the power absorbed by the ion trajectories in a global sense. electric field. The solved algebraic system of equations is represented by ill-conditioned 18-diagonal matrix with complex elements. Since early development of the EMIR code, the frontal method direct solver was used. That solver requires large CPU time and RAM, which both are proportional to Nr Nz2, for a grid of the size Nr x Nz. These requirements make almost impossible to use existent EMIR solver on PC to obtain RF fields with good accuracy. system. The suggested iterative method is Modified Incomplete Cholesky Preconditioned Conjugate Gradient Squared solver4. The solver involves a couple of the control parameters, which let a user tune the code to make iterations converge as fast as possible for a particular grid. Since the iterative solver does not require large RAM, and works much faster than the direct solver, the new algorithm lets us resolve RF fields on a PC with required accuracy. REFERENCES 1. Chang Díaz F.R., "Research Status of The Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket", Proc. 39th Annual Meeting of the Division of Plasma Physics (Pittsburgh, PA, 1997), Bulletin of APS, 42 2057. 2. Ilin A.V., Chang Díaz F.R., Squire J.P. and Carter M.D. "Monte Carlo Particle Dynamics in a Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket", (Proceedings of Open Systems' 98), Transactions of Fusion Technology, 35 330 - 334 (1999). 3. Jaeger E.F., Batchelor D.B., Weitzner H. and Whealton J.H. "ICRF Wave Propagation And Absorption in Tokamak And Mirror Magnetic Fields - A Full-wave Calculation", Computer Physics Com., 40 33 - 64 (1986). 4. Ilin, A. V., Bagheri, B., Scott, L. R., Briggs, J. M., and McCammon, J. A. "Parallelization of Poisson-Boltzmann and Brownian Dynamics calculation", Parallel Computing in Computational Chemistry, ACB Books, Washington D.C., (1995) 170-185.

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