Numerical Analysis of Fluid Estimation for Source Terms in Neutral Particle Simulations

In plasma edge simulations, kinetic Monte Carlo (MC) is often used to simulate neutral particles and estimate source terms. For large-sized reactors, like ITER and DEMO, high particle collision rates lead to a substantial computational cost for such schemes. To address this challenge, an asymptotic-preserving kinetic-diffusion Monte Carlo (KDMC) simulation method and a corresponding fluid estimation technique have been proposed in the literature. In this work, we perform numerical analysis on the convergence of KDMC with the fluid estimation. To do so, we compare the accuracy of the analyzed algorithm with the accuracy of an approximate fluid method using the kinetic MC method as a reference. In a one-dimensional test case, KDMC with the fluid estimation achieves at least one order of magnitude lower errors than the fluid method for both high- and low-collisional regimes. Moreover, KDMC with the fluid estimation outperforms the kinetic MC method with a clear speed-up. Overall, our analysis confirms the effectiveness of the discussed algorithm.