Turbulence Simulations in the Tokamak Edge With Discontinuous Galerkin Methods

The Gkeyll code is being developed to study turbulence in the edge region of fusion devices. The edge region involves large-amplitude fluctuations and electromagnetic effects, making it more challenging than the core region. Gkeyll models the turbulence by solving the 5-D full-F gyrokinetic system via a continuum representation (which is in contrast to particle-in-cell methods). We present a discontinuous Galerkin formulation of the system which preserves energy conservation. We also describe some of the challenges associated with adding self-consistent electromagnetic perturbations to Gkeyll.