Guiding center simulations on curvilinear grids*

Abstract

Semi-Lagrangian guiding center simulations are performed on sinusoidal perturbations of cartesian grids, and on deformed polar grid with different boundary conditions. Key ingredients are: the use of a B-spline finite element solver for the Poisson equation and the classical backward semi-Lagrangian method (BSL) for the advection. We are able to reproduce standard Kelvin-Helmholtz and diocotron instability tests on such grids. When the perturbation leads to a strong distorted mesh, we observe that the solution differs if one takes standard numerical parameters that are used in the cartesian reference case. We can recover good results together with correct mass conservation, by diminishing the time step.