Modular library for the kinetic and gyrokinetic simulation of tokamak plasmas by the semi-lagrangian or particle-in-cell methods

In the context of a longstanding collaboration between the CEA-Cadarache (French Atomic Energy Commision), the MINGUS and TONUS INRIA Project Teams based respectively in Rennes and Strasbourg and the Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik (IPP) in Garching, we started developing the Selalib library in 2010.

The SeLaLib software library is a modular library for kinetic and gyrokinetic simulations of plasmas in fusion energy devices by semi-Lagrangian or particle-in-cell methods.

The SeLaLib project arose from the need of researchers to develop numerical methods with simplified test cases while also having independently tested modules that would facilitate gradual changes in existing production code. While originally envisioned to be specialized on the semi-lagrangian method, the abstractions that we have built can be used with other types of approaches, such as particle-in-cell.

SeLaLib contains a collection of individual building blocks for the parallel simulation of the Vlasov equations and the gyrokinetic equation either based on semi-Lagrangian schemes or particle methods. Besides numerical algorithms the library provides low-level utilities, input-output modules as well as parallelization strategies. Moreover, a collection of simulations for typical test cases with various discretization schemes supplements the library.