Radio frequency (RF) waves can provide heating, current and flow drive, as well as instability control for steady state operations of fusion experiments. A particle simulation model has been developed in this work to provide a first-principles tool for studying the RF nonlinear interactions with plasmas. In this model, ions are considered as fully kinetic particles using the Vlasov equation and electrons are treated as guiding centers using the drift kinetic equation. This model has been implemented in a global gyrokinetic toroidal code (GTC) using real electron-to-ion mass ratio. To verify the model, linear simulations of ion plasma oscillation, ion Bernstein wave, and lower hybrid wave are carried out in cylindrical geometry and found to agree well with analytic predictions.

Electromagnetic particle simulation model has been formulated and verified for nonlinear processes of lower hybrid (LH) waves in fusion plasmas. Electron dynamics is described by the drift kinetic equation using either kinetic momentum or canonical momentum. Ion dynamics is treated as the fluid system or by the Vlasov equation. Compressible magnetic perturbation is retained to simulate both the fast and slow LH waves. Numerical properties are greatly improved by using electron continuity equation to enforce consistency between electrostatic potential and vector potential, and by using the importance sampling technique. The simulation model has been implemented in the gyrokinetic toroidal code (GTC), and verified for the dispersion relation and nonlinear particle trapping of the electromagnetic LH waves.