Gyrokinetic Fokker-Planck Collision Operator

Abstract

The gyrokinetic linearized exact Fokker-Planck collision operator is obtained in a form suitable for plasma gyrokinetic equations, for arbitrary mass ratio. The linearized Fokker-Planck operator includes both the test-particle and field-particle contributions, and automatically conserves particles, momentum, and energy, while ensuring non-negative entropy production. Finite gyroradius effects in both field-particle and test-particle terms are evaluated. When implemented in gyrokinetic simulations, these effects can be precomputed. The field-particle operator at each time step requires the evaluation of a single two-dimensional integral, and is not only more accurate, but appears to be less expensive to evaluate than conserving model operators.