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We demonstrate that cross field transport in the scrape-off layer (SOL) can be moderately increased by electromagnetic effects in high-beta regimes, resulting in broadening of the electron heat-flux width on the endplates. This conclusion is taken from full-f electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of a helical SOL model that roughly approximates the SOL of the National Spherical Torus Experiment. The simulations have been performed with the Gkeyll code, which recently became the first code to demonstrate the capability to simulate electromagnetic gyrokinetic turbulence on open magnetic field lines with sheath boundary conditions. We scan the source rate and thus β, so that the normalized pressure gradient (the MHD ballooning parameter α ∝ ∂ β / ∂ r ∝ β / L p ) is scanned over an experimentally relevant range, α = 0.3 − 1.5. While there is little change in the pressure gradient scale length Lp near the midplane as beta is increased, a 10% increase in cross field transport near the midplane results in an increase in the electron heat-flux width λq and a 25% reduction of the peak electron heat flux to the endplates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present an energy-conserving discontinuous Galerkin scheme for the full- $f$ electromagnetic gyrokinetic system in the long-wavelength limit. We use the symplectic formulation and solve directly for $\unicode[STIX]{x2202}A_{\Vert }/\unicode[STIX]{x2202}t$ , the inductive component of the parallel electric field, using a generalized Ohm's law derived directly from the gyrokinetic equation. Linear benchmarks are performed to verify the implementation and show that the scheme avoids the Ampère cancellation problem. We perform a nonlinear electromagnetic simulation in a helical open-field-line system as a rough model of the tokamak scrape-off layer using parameters from the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX). This is the first published nonlinear electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulation on open field lines. Comparisons are made to a corresponding electrostatic simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]