Modeling of Plasma Transport During Edge‐Localized Modes in Tokamaks Using a Kinetic Vlasov‐Poisson Code

A kinetic parallel transport code KOBRA based on a finite‐volume method is developed to study edge localized mode (ELM) plasma transport from the mid‐plane to divertor targets. The large scale separation between the Debye length (∼cm) and the connection length (∼10–20 m) leads to prohibitive computational cost in full 6D simulations. To alleviate this, an adaptive‐mesh refinement (AMR) strategy is employed. Comparisons with uniform‐grid simulations show that AMR accurately reproduces the characteristic ELM dynamics, including the rapid rise and slow decay of divertor fluxes, as well as the early‐time peak induced by fast electrons. Analysis of the electron distribution and self‐consistent electric field reveals that AMR efficiency is closely linked to phase‐space evolution. Overall, AMR achieves comparable physical accuracy while reducing memory usage by and accelerating computations by up to a factor of two, demonstrating its effectiveness for high‐dimensional kinetic ELM simulations.