Relativistic Two-Fluid Electrodynamics Using Implicit-Explicit Discontinuous-Galerkin Methods

Relativistic weakly collisional plasmas describe a variety of astrophysical and terrestrial plasmas, ranging from relativistic outflows from active galactic nuclei to high power microwave and magnetically insulated transmission lines. In many such systems, high fidelity kinetic models are computationally infeasible due large dynamical scales and long dynamical times. Conversely, most fluid based models such as magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) miss many relevant aspects of plasma behavior. Between these two models, two fluid methods – where the electrons and ions are evolved as separate, coupled fluids – capture many of the plasma physics of a kinetic code while remaining computational tractable for large systems.