Implementation of CR Energy SPectrum (CRESP) algorithm in PIERNIK MHD code. I. Spectrally resolved propagation of CR electrons on Eulerian grids

Abstract

We present an efficient algorithm to follow spectral evolution of Cosmic Rays (CR) coupled with an MHD system on Eulerian grids. The algorithm is designed for studies of CR energy spectrum evolution in MHD simulations of a galactic interstellar medium. The base algorithm for CR transport relies on the two-moment piece-wise power-law method, known also as Coarse Grained Momentum Final Volume (CGMV), for solving the Fokker-Planck CR transport equation, with a low number of momentum-bins extending over several decades of the momentum coordinate. We propose an extension of the CGMV with a novel feature which allows momentum boundaries to change in response to CR momentum gains or losses near the extremes of the population distribution. Our extension involves a special treatment of momentum bins containing spectral cutoff. Contrary to the regular bins of fixed width, those bins have variable-width, and their outer edges coincide with spectral cutoffs. The cutoff positions are estimated from the particle number density and energy density in the outer bins for an assumed small value of an additional parameter representing the smallest physically significant level of CR spectral energy density. We performed a series of elementary tests to validate the algorithm and demonstrated, whenever possible, that results of the test simulations correspond, with a reasonable accuracy, to the results of analogous analytical solutions. In a more complex test of galactic CR-driven wind problem we obtained results consistent with expectations regarding the effects of advection, diffusion, adiabatic, and synchrotron cooling of a CR population.