A verification of the gyrokinetic microstability codes GEM, GYRO, and GS2

A previous publication [R. V. Bravenec et al., Phys. Plasmas 18, 122505 (2011)] presented favorable comparisons of linear frequencies and nonlinear fluxes from the Eulerian gyrokinetic codes GYRO [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J. Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003)] and GS2 [W. Dorland et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5579 (2000)]. The motivation was to verify the codes, i.e., demonstrate that they correctly solve the gyrokinetic-Maxwell equations. The premise was that it is highly unlikely for both codes to yield the same incorrect results. In this work, we add the Lagrangian particle-in-cell code GEM [Y. Chen and S. Parker, J. Comput. Phys. 220, 839 (2007)] to the comparisons, not simply to add another code, but also to demonstrate that the codes' algorithms do not matter. We find good agreement of GEM with GYRO and GS2 for the plasma conditions considered earlier, thus establishing confidence that the codes are verified and that ongoing validation efforts for these plasma parameters are warranted. (C) 2013 AIP Publishing LLC.