Verification of the delta-f kinetic electron physics in XGC

The High-Fidelity Whole Device Modeling project aims at delivering a core-edge coupled simulation including kinetic electron physics. XGC and GENE have been cross-verified for electrostatic ion temperature gradient instabilities with adiabatic electrons [Merlo et al Phys. Plasmas 25, 062308 (2018)]. In the present work, XGC kinetic electron physics will be cross-verified against the gyrokinetic PIC code ORB5. Indeed, ORB5 and GENE have already been specifically benchmarked with kinetic electrons [J. Dominski, et al. Phys. Plasma 2017]. Moreover, ORB5 and XGC being PIC codes, a particular care will be given to the particle sampling noise problem.