## Pegasus: a new hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell code for astrophysical plasma dynamics.(English)Zbl 1349.82149

Summary: We describe Pegasus, a new hybrid-kinetic particle-in-cell code tailored for the study of astrophysical plasma dynamics. The code incorporates an energy-conserving particle integrator into a stable, second-order-accurate, three-stage predictor-predictor-corrector integration algorithm. The constrained transport method is used to enforce the divergence-free constraint on the magnetic field. A $$\delta f$$ scheme is included to facilitate a reduced-noise study of systems in which only small departures from an initial distribution function are anticipated. The effects of rotation and shear are implemented through the shearing-sheet formalism with orbital advection. These algorithms are embedded within an architecture similar to that used in the popular astrophysical magnetohydrodynamics code Athena, one that is modular, well-documented, easy to use, and efficiently parallelized for use on thousands of processors. We present a series of tests in one, two, and three spatial dimensions that demonstrate the fidelity and versatility of the code.

### MSC:

 82D10 Statistical mechanics of plasmas 82C80 Numerical methods of time-dependent statistical mechanics (MSC2010)

### Keywords:

hybrid; particle-in-cell; numerical methods; plasma

### Software:

Athena ; Qn3d; HYPERS; NIRVANA; Athena; ZEUS; dHybrid; Pegasus ; TRISTAN
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