Numerical Methods for Plasma Astrophysics:
From Particle Kinetics to MHD

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Preliminary Studies of Kinetic Magnetorotational Instability with ZEUS

Prateek Sharma

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab at Princeton University

Abstract:   We have modified the ZEUS-3D code to study the magnetorotational instability (MRI) in the collisionless limit in the local shearing box configuration. The collisionless MRI can be important for angular momentum transport and magnetic field amplification in radiatively inefficient accretion flows (RIAF) onto compact objects such as black holes. The time scale of accretion in these cases is $\ll$ the collision time and hence we expect collisionless effects could be important. Different equations for the evolution of pressures parallel and perpendicular to the magnetic field have been added using a simple form of Landau fluid closures to approximate kinetic MHD (Snyder, Hammett, Dorland, Phys.\ Fluids 1997). The code has been tested in the ``double adiabatic" and collisionless limits against earlier linear calculations (Sharma, Hammett Quataert, Ap.J. 2003). Some preliminary nonlinear results will be shown.