Benchmark for two-dimensional large scale coherent structures in partially magnetized E × B plasmas—community collaboration & lessons learned
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Low-temperature plasmas (LTPs) are essential to both fundamental scientific research and critical industrial applications. As in many areas of science, numerical simulations have become a vital tool for uncovering new physical phenomena and guiding technological development. Code benchmarking remains crucial for verifying implementations and evaluating performance. This work continues the Landmark benchmark initiative, a series specifically designed to support the verification of LTP codes. In this study, seventeen simulation codes from a collaborative community of nineteen international institutions modeled a partially magnetized E × B Penning discharge. The emergence of large scale coherent structures, or rotating plasma spokes, endows this configuration with an enormous range of time scales, making it particularly challenging to simulate. The codes showed excellent agreement on the rotation frequency of the spoke as well as key plasma properties, including time-averaged ion density, plasma potential, and electron temperature profiles. Achieving this level of agreement came with challenges, and we share lessons learned on how to conduct future benchmarking campaigns. Comparing code implementations, computational hardware, and simulation runtimes also revealed interesting trends, which are summarized with the aim of guiding future plasma simulation software development.
Authors: Andrew T Powis, Eduardo Ahedo, Alejandro Álvarez Laguna, Nicolas Barléon, Enrique Bello-Benítez, Lucas Beving, Jean-Pierre Boeuf, Guillaume Bogopolsky, Anne Bourdon, Filippo Cichocki, Bénédicte Cuenot, Andrew Denig, Zoltán Donkó, Paul-Quentin Elias, Miguel P Encinar, Denis Eremin, Pablo Fajardo, Farbod Faraji, Gwenael Fubiani, Laurent Garrigues, Kentaro Hara, Peter Hartmann, Matthew Hopkins, Igor D Kaganovich, Aaron Knoll, Giovanni Lapenta, Thierry E Magin, Alberto Marín-Cebrián, Mario Merino, Pierpaolo Minelli, Mina Papahn Zadeh, Pietro Parodi, Federico Petronio, Maryam Reza, Andrei I Smolyakov, Dmytro Sydorenko, Francesco Taccogna, Miles M Turner, Olivier Vermorel, Willca Villafana, Liang Xu
Institutions: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, École Polytechnique, Sorbonne Université, Institut Polytechnique de Paris, Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas, Centre Européen de Recherche et de Formation Avancée en Calcul Scientifique, Sandia National Laboratories, Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, Laboratoire Plasma et Conversion d'Energie, Université de Toulouse, National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, ENEA Frascati Research Centre, Stanford University, HUN-REN Wigner Research Centre for Physics, Université Paris-Saclay, Office National d'Études et de Recherches Aérospatiales, Département Physique, Instrumentation, Environnement et Espace, Ruhr University Bochum, Imperial College London, KU Leuven, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Institute for the Science and Technology of Plasmas, National Research Council, University of Saskatchewan, Von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics, University of Alberta, Dublin City University
Language: English
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Estimated APC paid: $3,325
OpenAlex ID: W7124734868