A 2D high-β Hall MHD implicit nonlinear solver

A nonlinear, fully implicit solver for a 2D high-beta (incompressible) Hall magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD) model is proposed. The task in non-trivial because HMHD supports the whistler wave. This wave is dispersive (omega similar to k(2)) and therefore results in diffusion-like numerical stability limits for explicit time integration methods. For HMHD, implicit approaches using time steps above the explicit numerical stability limits result in diagonally submissive Jacobian systems. Such systems are difficult to invert with iterative techniques. In this study, Jacobian-free Newton-Krylov iterative methods are employed for a fully implicit, nonlinear integration, and a semi-implicit (SI) preconditioner strategy, developed on the basis of a Schur complement analysis, is proposed. The SI preconditioner transforms the coupled hyperbolic whistler system into a fourth-order, parabolic, diagonally dominant PDE, amenable to iterative techniques. Efficiency and accuracy results are presented demonstrating that an efficient fully implicit implementation (i.e., faster than explicit methods) is indeed possible without sacrificing numerical accuracy. (C) 2003 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.