Combination of micro-macro and spatially hybrid fluid-kinetic approach for hydrogenic plasma edge neutrals

A new hybrid fluid-kinetic approach for the hydrogenic neutrals (atoms and molecules) in the plasma edge is presented. The hybrid approach combines a fully kinetic model for the atoms in the low-collisional regions near the vessel wall, and for the molecules in the whole plasma edge domain, with a micro-macro approach for atoms originating from recycling at the divertor targets, volumetric recombination, and dissociation of molecules. With the micro-macro approach, the originally scattering-dominated collision term due to charge-exchange collisions in the kinetic equation is transformed to an absorption-dominated term, while a large part of the neutral population is treated through a fluid approach. For JET L-mode plasmas, the premature termination of Monte Carlo particle trajectories in the hybrid approach leads to a reduction of the CPU time by approximately a factor 3 for a high-recycling case and by approximately a factor 11 for a partially detached case compared with a simulation with fully kinetic neutrals and the same amount of particles. For coupled fluid plasma -- hybrid neutral simulations -- the hybrid approach predicts the plasma divertor target profiles with a maximum hybrid-kinetic discrepancy of approximately 30%. (© 2022 The Authors. Contributions to Plasma Physics published by Wiley‐VCH GmbH.)