A hyperbolic-equation system approach for magnetized electron fluids in quasi-neutral plasmas

A new approach using a hyperbolic-equation system (HES) is proposed to solve for the electron fluids in quasi-neutral plasmas. The HES approach avoids treatments of cross-diffusion terms which cause numerical instabilities in conventional approaches using an elliptic equation (EE). A test calculation reveals that the HES approach can robustly solve problems of strong magnetic confinement by using an upwind method. The computation time of the HES approach is compared with that of the EE approach in terms of the size of the problem and the strength of magnetic confinement. The results indicate that the HES approach can be used to solve problems in a simple structured mesh without increasing computational time compared to the EE approach and that it features fast convergence in conditions of strong magnetic confinement. (C) 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.