Gyrokinetic turbulence simulations with kinetic electrons

Gyrokinetic turbulence simulations are presented with full drift-kinetic electron dynamics including both trapped and passing particle effects. This is made possible by using a generalization of the split-weight scheme [I. Manuilskiy and W. W. Lee, Phys. Plasmas 7, 1381 (2000)] that allows for a variable adiabatic part, as well as use of the parallel canonical momentum formulation. Linear simulations in shearless slab geometry and nonlinear simulations using representative tokamak parameters demonstrate the applicability of this generalized split-weight scheme to the turbulence transport problem in the low beta regime [beta (m(i)/m(e))less than or equal to1]. The issues relating to difficulties at higher beta, and initial three-dimensional toroidal simulations results will be discussed. (C) 2001 American Institute of Physics.