Quasi-steady and steady states in global gyrokinetic particle-in-cell simulations

Collisionless delta-f gyrokinetic particle-in-cell simulations suffer from the entropy paradox, in which the entropy grows linearly in time while low-order moments are saturated. As a consequence, these simulations do not reach a steady state and are unsuited to make quantitative predictions. A solution to this issue is the introduction of artificial dissipation. The notion of steady state in gyrokinetic simulations is studied by deriving an evolution equation for the fluctuation entropy and applying it to the global collisionless particle-in-cell code ORB5 [S. Jolliet , Comput. Phys. Commun. 177, 409 (2007)]. It is shown that a recently implemented noise-control algorithm [B. F. McMillan , Phys. Plasmas 15, 052308 (2008)] based on a W-stat provides the necessary dissipation to reach a steady state. The two interesting situations of decaying and driven turbulence are considered. In addition, it is shown that a separate heating algorithm, not based on a W-stat, does not lead to a statistical steady state.