The dielectric response of plasmas with arbitrary gyrotropic velocity distributions

Hot and tenuous plasmas are frequently far from local thermodynamic equilibrium, necessitating sophisticated methods for determining the associated plasma dielectric tensor and normal mode response. The Arbitrary Linear Plasma Solver is a numerical tool for calculating such responses of plasmas with arbitrary gyrotropic background velocity distribution functions (VDFs). To model weakly and moderately damped plasma waves accurately, we have updated the code to use an improved analytic continuation enabled by a polynomial basis representation. We demonstrate the continuity of solutions to the linear Vlasov–Maxwell dispersion relation between bi-Maxwellian and arbitrary VDF representations and evaluate the influence of VDF structure on mode polarization and wave power emission and absorption.