Simulating Gyrokinetic Microinstabilities in Stellarator Geometry with GS2

The nonlinear gyrokinetic code GS2 has been extended to treat non-axisymmetric stellarator geometry. Electromagnetic perturbations and multiple trapped particle regions are allowed. Here, linear, collisionless, electrostatic simulations of the quasi-axisymmetric, three-field period National Compact Stellarator Experiment (NCSX) design QAS3-C82 have been successfully benchmarked against the eigenvalue code FULL. Quantitatively, the linear stability calculations of GS2 and FULL agree to within ~10%.Comment: Submitted to Physics of Plasmas. 9 pages, 14 figure

Trapped ion mode in toroidally rotating plasmas

The influence of radially sheared toroidal flows on the Trapped Ion Mode (TIM) is investigated using a two-dimensional eigenmode code. These radially extended toroidal microinstabilities could significantly influence the interpretation of confinement scaling trends and associated fluctuation properties observed in recent tokamak experiments. In the present analysis, the electrostatic drift kinetic equation is obtained from the general nonlinear gyrokinetic equation in rotating plasmas. In the long perpendicular wavelength limit k{sub {tau}}{rho}{sub bi} {much_lt} 1, where {rho}{sub bi} is the average trapped-ion banana width, the resulting eigenmode equation becomes a coupled system of second order differential equations nmo for the poloidal harmonics. These equations are solved using finite element methods. Numerical results from the analysis of low and medium toroidal mode number instabilities are presented using representative TFTR L-mode input parameters. To illustrate the effects of mode coupling, a case is presented where the poloidal mode coupling is suppressed. The influence of toroidal rotation on a TFTR L-mode shot is also analyzed by including a beam species with considerable larger temperature. A discussion of the numerical results is presented

Gyrokinetic theory for arbitrary wavelength electromagnetic modes in tokamaks

A linear gyrokinetic system for arbitrary wavelength electromagnetic modes is developed. A wide range of modes in inhomogeneous plasmas, such as the internal kink modes, the toroidal Alfven eigenmode (TAE) modes, and the drift modes, can be recovered from this system. The inclusion of most of the interesting physical factors into a single framework enables one to look at many familiar modes simultaneously and thus to study the modifications of and the interactions between them in a systematic way. Especially, the authors are able to investigate self-consistently the kinetic MHD phenomena entirely from the kinetic side. Phase space Lagrangian Lie perturbation methods and a newly developed computer algebra package for vector analysis in general coordinate system are utilized in the analytical derivation. In tokamak geometries, a 2D finite element code has been developed and tested. In this paper, they present the basic theoretical formalism and some of the preliminary results

Symbolic Vector Analysis in Plasma Physics

Many problems in plasma physics involve substantial amounts of analytical vector calculation. The complexity usually originates from both the vector operations themselves and the choice of underlying coordinate system. A computer algebra package for symbolic vector analysis in general coordinate systems, General Vector Analysis (GVA), is developed using Mathematica. The modern viewpoint for 3D vector calculus, differential forms on 3-manifolds, is adopted to unify and systematize the vector calculus operations in general coordinate systems. This package will benefit physicists and applied mathematicians in their research where complicated vector analysis is required. It will not only save a huge amount of human brain-power and dramatically improve accuracy, but this package will also be an intelligent tool to assist researchers in finding the right approaches to their problems. Several applications of this symbolic vector analysis package to plasma physics are also given

Symbolic Vector Analysis in Plasma Physics

Many problems in plasma physics involve substantial amounts of analytical vector calculation. The complexity usually originates from both the vector operations themselves and the choice of underlying coordinate system. A computer algebra package for symbolic vector analysis in general coordinate systems, GeneralVectorAnalysis (GVA), is developed using Mathematica. The modern viewpoint for 3D vector calculus, differential forms on 3-manifolds, is adopted to unify and systematize the vector calculus operations in general coordinate systems. This package will benefit physicists and applied mathematicians in their research where complicated vector analysis is required. It will not only save a huge amount of human brain-power and dramatically improve accuracy, but this package will also be an intelligent tool to assist researchers in finding the right approaches to their problems. Several applications of this symbolic vector analysis package to plasma physics are also given

Multispecies Density and Temperature Gradient Dependence of Quasilinear Particle and Energy Fluxes

The variations of the normalized quasilinear particle and energy fluxes with artificial changes in the density and temperature gradients, as well as the variations of the linear growth rates and real frequencies, for ion temperature gradient and trapped-electron modes, are calculated. The quasilinear fluxes are normalized to the total energy flux, summed over all species. Here, realistic cases for tokamaks and spherical torii are considered which have two impurity species. For situations where there are substantial changes in the normalized fluxes, the ''diffusive approximation,'' in which the normalized fluxes are taken to be linear in the gradients, is seen to be inaccurate. Even in the case of small artificial changes in density or temperature gradients, changes in the fluxes of different species (''off-diagonal'') generally are significant, or even dominant, compared to those for the same species (''diagonal'')

Microinstability properties of negative magnetic shear discharges in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor and DIII-D

The microinstability properties of discharges with negative (reversed) magnetic shear in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) and DIII-D experiments with and without confinement transitions are investigated. A comprehensive kinetic linear eigenmode calculation employing the ballooning representation is employed with experimentally measured profile data, and using the corresponding numerically computed magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) equilibria. The instability considered is the toroidal drift mode (trapped-electron-{eta}{sub i} mode). A variety of physical effects associated with differing q-profiles are explained. In addition, different negative magnetic shear discharges at different times in the discharge for TFTR and DIII-D are analyzed. The effects of sheared toroidal rotation, using data from direct spectroscopic measurements for carbon, are analyzed using comparisons with results from a two-dimensional calculation. Comparisons are also made for nonlinear stabilization associated with shear in E{sub r}/RB{sub {theta}}. The relative importance of changes in different profiles (density, temperature, q, rotation, etc.) on the linear growth rates is considered

Gyrokinetic Stability Studies of the Microtearing Mode in the National Spherical Torus Experiment H-mode

Insight into plasma microturbulence and transport is being sought using linear simulations of drift waves on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX), following a study of drift wave modes on the Alcator C-Mod Tokamak. Microturbulence is likely generated by instabilities of drift waves, which cause transport of heat and particles. Understanding this transport is important because the containment of heat and particles is required for the achievement of practical nuclear fusion. Microtearing modes may cause high heat transport through high electron thermal conductivity. It is hoped that microtearing will be stable along with good electron transport in the proposed low collisionality International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Stability of the microtearing mode is investigated for conditions at mid-radius in a high density NSTX high performance (H-mode) plasma, which is compared to the proposed ITER plasmas. The microtearing mode is driven by the electron temperature gradient, and believed to be mediated by ion collisions and magnetic shear. Calculations are based on input files produced by TRXPL following TRANSP (a time-dependent transport analysis code) analysis. The variability of unstable mode growth rates is examined as a function of ion and electron collisionalities using the parallel gyrokinetic computational code GS2. Results show the microtearing mode stability dependence for a range of plasma collisionalities. Computation verifies analytic predictions that higher collisionalities than in the NSTX experiment increase microtearing instability growth rates, but that the modes are stabilized at the highest values. There is a transition of the dominant mode in the collisionality scan to ion temperature gradient character at both high and low collisionalities. The calculations suggest that plasma electron thermal confinement may be greatly improved in the low-collisionality ITER

Microtearing Instability In The ITER Pedestal

Unstable microtearing modes are discovered by the GS2 gyrokinetic siimulation code, in the pedestal region of a simulated ITER H-mode plasma with approximately 400 WM DT fusion power. Existing nonlinear theory indicates that these instabilities should produce stochastic magnetic fields and broaden the pedestal. The resulted electron thermal conductivity is estimated and the implications of these findings are discussed

Kinetic analysis of MHD ballooning modes in tokamaks

A comprehensive analysis of the stability properties of the appropriate kinetically generalized form of MHD ballooning modes together with the usual trapped-particle drift modes is presented. The calculations are fully electromagnetic and include the complete dynamics associated with compressional ion acoustic waves. Trapped-particle effects along with all forms of collisionless dissipation are taken into account without approximations. The influence of collisions is estimated with a model Krook operator. Results from the application of this analysis to realistic tokamak operating conditions indicate that unstable short-wavelength modes with significant growth rates can extend from ..beta.. = 0 to value above the upper ideal-MHD-critical-beta associated with the so-called second stability regime. Since the strength of the relevant modes appears to vary gradually with ..beta.., these results support a soft beta limit picture involving a continuous (rather than abrupt or hard) modification of anomalous transport already present in low-..beta..-tokamaks. However, at higher beta the increasing dominance of the electromagnetic component of the perturbations indicated by these calculations could also imply significantly different transport scaling properties