  We discuss spatially and temporally adaptive implicit-explicit (IMEX) methods
for parallel simulations of three-dimensional fluid streamer discharges in
atmospheric air. We examine strategies for advancing the fluid equations and
elliptic transport equations (e.g. Poisson) with different time steps,
synchronizing them on a global physical time scale which is taken to be
proportional to the dielectric relaxation time. The use of a longer time step
for the electric field leads to numerical errors that can be diagnosed, and we
quantify the conditions where this simplification is valid. Likewise, using a
three-term Helmholtz model for radiative transport, the same error diagnostics
show that the radiative transport equations do not need to be resolved on time
scales finer than the dielectric relaxation time. Elliptic equations are
bottlenecks for most streamer simulation codes, and the results presented here
potentially provide computational savings. Finally, a computational example of
3D branching streamers in a needle-plane geometry that uses up to 700 million
grid cells is presented.
