Building a numerical relativistic non-ideal magnetohydrodynamics code for astrophysical applications

AbstractIncluding resistive effects in relativistic magnetized plasmas is a challenging task, that a number of authors have recently tackled employing different methods. From the numerical point of view, the difficulty in including non-ideal terms arises from the fact that, in the limit of very high plasma conductivity (i.e., close to the ideal MHD limit), the system of governing equations becomes stiff, and the standard explicit integrating methods produce instabilities that destroy the numerical solution. To deal with such a difficulty, we have extended the relativistic MHD code MR-GENESIS, to include a number of Implicit Explicit Runge-Kutta (IMEX-RK) numerical methods. To validate the i…