Multi-species magnetized plasma fluid simulations with BOUT++/Hermes

Magnetized laboratory and space plasmas of scientific and practical interest contain multiple ionized and neutral ion species. We present a new simulation tool to study turbulence and transport in these plasmas, with examples in 1D, 2D and 3D involving mixed hydrogenic, helium and neon plasmas. Our motivation is the study of transport and turbulence in the edge and divertor of tokamak fusion reactors, but the applications of BOUT++/Hermes are broader and offer opportunities to validate and improve our models.

Hermes is publicly available on Github and builds on BOUT++ which is also open source with an active community. Hermes provides a set of model components, allowing models with an arbitrary number of plasma and neutral species to be constructed, from simple isothermal simulations with a single ion species, to complex multi-ion simulations. We will present 3D simulations of flux-driven turbulence in LAPD geometry, with helium and hydrogen species. These have been carried out in preparation for experiments to be carried out at the BaPSF during the next two years to study the impact of plasma species, neutral collisionality and plasma parallel flows on drift-wave turbulence.