Fokker-Planck transport modelling of RF-heated magnetic mirrors with Hybrid-Particle-in-Cell code*

In the past few years, there has been an increased interest in Radiofrequency (RF) heating of low ($\sim 10 eV$) and high ($\sim 1keV$) temperature plasmas in open magnetic geometries for applications ranging from diverter simulators, electric thrusters, fusion neutron sources, fusion-fission hybrids and pure-fusion reactors. This has motivated the development for Fokker-Planck solvers to understand transport under the influence of RF heating, Coulomb collisions and kinetic effects.\\ In this work, we present progress towards Fokker-Planck transport simulations of RF heated plasmas in open magnetic geometries using a parallel, electromagnetic, hybrid-Particle-in-Cell code: Prometheus++ where the electrons are of fluid nature and the kinetic behavior of ions is retained. Furthermore, a Fokker-Planck Coulomb collision operator has been developed and added to the code to investigate the collisional transport of ions in these devices. In addition, we discuss the process of selecting initial conditions for both the plasma pressure and beta-corrected magnetic field in order to minimize the free energy at the start of simulation. Finally, we discuss plans to introduce RF heating operators.