On the collisional transport of plasma using a 13-moment model

Plasmas, being complex systems of a large number of non-linear processes, do not usually allow simple or even analytical solutions. Their evolution over time is described by different sets of equations depending on the parameters of the given plasma at hand. The goal of this field, as in any other theoretical field of physics, is to bridge these various descriptions so that a complete understanding of these complex non-linear processes can be obtained. In this talk, plasma transport such as thermal & electrical conductivity, thermo-electric effects, and viscosity are studied with a model consisting of the 13-moments of the Fokker-Planck equation. In the collisional regime this model is compared against Chapman-Enskog expansions, such as Braginskii's (1965) transport equations. Comparisons to the results of Davies et al. (2021) confirm that the 13-moment model possesses the correct physical behaviour of the transport coefficients at low magnetization, unlike Epperlein & Haines (1986). Validation tests using the XMHD code PERSEUS show that a 13-moment plasma model can both reasonably approximate Braginskii's near equilibrium transport while maintaining a physical hyperbolic formulation that has finite propagation speeds, as well as offer a natural extension to non-equilibrium systems.