One can treat the electrons as a species in the code. If one sets the input parameter ecouple=2 then the code treats the first species specially as electrons and uses different collision rates derived from Landau-Spitzer and/or NRL. However, the timestep requirements are excessive in this case. If we can do a semi-implicit solve for the electrons we can step over that restriction. Simple lagged collision rates have proved to be unstable.
One can treat the electrons as a species in the code. If one sets the input parameter
ecouple=2
then the code treats the first species specially as electrons and uses different collision rates derived from Landau-Spitzer and/or NRL. However, the timestep requirements are excessive in this case. If we can do a semi-implicit solve for the electrons we can step over that restriction. Simple lagged collision rates have proved to be unstable.