Gyrokinetic simulations for turbulent transport of multi-ion-species plasmas in helical systems

The turbulent transport of magnetic confinement plasmas including multi-ion-particle-species in helical systems such as the Large Helical Device (LHD) [Takeiri et al., Nucl. Fusion 57, 102023 (2017)] and their plasma profile sensitivities are investigated by local flux-tube gyrokinetic simulations. In the multi-ion-species plasmas, while the heat transport of each particle species has slightly different sensitivity towards the plasma temperature gradients and the density gradients, there exist quite different dependencies in the particle transport on the radial gradient profiles of the plasma temperatures and densities between each particle species. Furthermore, in the LHD plasma with the carbon impurity hole structure [Ida et al., Plasma Phys. 16, 056111 (2009)], the turbulent particle transport flux of the impurity carbon ion remains radially inward-directed robustly within the wide ranges of radial gradient profiles of the plasma temperatures and densities

Improved prediction scheme for ion heat turbulent transport

A novel scheme to predict the turbulent transport of ion heat of magnetic confined plasmas is developed by combining mathematical optimization techniques employed in data analysis approaches and first-principle gyrokinetic simulations. Gyrokinetic simulation, as a first-principle approach, is a reliable way to predict turbulent transport. However, in terms of the flux-matching [Candy et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 060704 (2009)], quantitative transport estimates by gyrokinetic simulations incur extremely heavy computational costs. In order to reduce the costs of quantitative transport prediction based on the gyrokinetic simulations, we develop a scheme with the aid of a reduced transport model. In the scheme, optimization techniques are applied to find relevant input parameters for nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, which should be performed to obtain relevant transport fluxes and to optimize the reduced transport model for a target plasma. The developed scheme can reduce the numbers of the gyrokinetic simulations to perform the quantitative estimate of the turbulent transport levels and plasma profiles. Utilizing the scheme, the predictions for the turbulent transport can be realized by performing the first-principle simulations once for each radial position

Impact of hydrogen isotope species on microinstabilities in helical plasmas

The impact of isotope ion mass on ion-scale and electron-scale microinstabilities such as ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode, trapped electron mode (TEM), and electron temperature gradient (ETG) mode in helical plasmas are investigated by using gyrokinetic Vlasov simulations with a hydrogen isotope and real-mass kinetic electrons. Comprehensive scans for the equilibrium parameters and magnetic configurations clarify the transition from ITG mode to TEM instability, where a significant TEM enhancement is revealed in the case of inward-shifted plasma compared to that in the standard configuration. It is elucidated that the ion-mass dependence on the ratio of the electron–ion collision frequency to the ion transit one, i.e. ${{\nu}_{\text{ei}}}/{{\omega}_{\text{ti}}}\propto {{\left({{m}_{\text{i}}}/{{m}_{\text{e}}}\right)}^{1/2}}$ , leads to a stabilization of the TEM for heavier isotope ions. The ITG growth rate indicates a gyro-Bohm-like ion-mass dependence, where the mixing-length estimate of diffusivity yields $\gamma /k_{\bot}^{2}\propto m_{\text{i}}^{1/2}$ . On the other hand, a weak isotope dependence of the ETG growth rate is identified. A collisionality scan also reveals that the TEM stabilization by the isotope ions becomes more significant for relatively higher collisionality in a banana regime

Collagen gene expression during chondrogenesis from chick periosteum-derived cells

AbstractChick periosteum-derived cells, which do not enter the chondrogenic cell lineage during normal bone development and growth, exhibit chondrogenic potential in high cell density culture conditions. In such cultures, collagen gene expression was temporally analyzed at the mRNA level by a reverse transcription PCR (RT-PCR) procedure, which showed that α1(II) and α1(IX) collagen mRNAs are coordinately increased, coincident with the onset of overt chondrogenesis, and subsequently decreased as chondrocytes exhibited hypertrophic characteristics. α1(X) collagen mRNA was detected well before the onset of chondrogenesis and markedly increased along with the hypertrophic change. For α2(I) collagen, both the bone/tendon form and the cartilage form of mRNA were detected throughout the culture period. This culture system provides an experimental vehicle capable of investigating the molecular events involved in the full range of chondrogenic differentiation starting from uncommitted periosteum-derived mesenchymal stem cells

Isotope Effects on Trapped-Electron-Mode Driven Turbulence and Zonal Flows in Helical and Tokamak Plasmas

Impacts of isotope ion mass on trapped-electron-mode (TEM)-driven turbulence and zonal flows in magnetically confined fusion plasmas are investigated. Gyrokinetic simulations of TEM-driven turbulence in three-dimensional magnetic configuration of helical plasmas with hydrogen isotope ions and real-mass kinetic electrons are realized for the first time, and the linear and the nonlinear nature of the isotope and collisional effects on the turbulent transport and zonal-flow generation are clarified. It is newly found that combined effects of the collisional TEM stabilization by the isotope ions and the associated increase in the impacts of the steady zonal flows at the near-marginal linear stability lead to the significant transport reduction with the opposite ion mass dependence in comparison to the conventional gyro-Bohm scaling. The universal nature of the isotope effects on the TEM-driven turbulence and zonal flows is verified for a wide variety of toroidal plasmas, e.g., axisymmetric tokamak and non-axisymmetric helical or stellarator systems

Conservation laws for collisional and turbulent transport processes in toroidal plasmas with large mean flows

A novel gyrokinetic formulation is presented by including collisional effects into the Lagrangian variational principle to yield the governing equations for background and turbulent electromagnetic fields and gyrocenter distribution functions, which can simultaneously describe classical, neoclassical, and turbulent transport processes in toroidal plasmas with large toroidal flows on the order of the ion thermal velocity. Noether\u27s theorem modified for collisional systems and the collision operator given in terms of Poisson brackets are applied to derivation of the particle, energy, and toroidal momentum balance equations in the conservative forms, which are desirable properties for long-time global transport simulation

Nonlinear functional relation covering near- and far-marginal stability in ion temperature gradient driven turbulence

A novel nonlinear functional relation of turbulence potential intensity, zonal flow potential intensity, and ion thermal diffusivity that accurately reproduces nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of toroidal ion temperature gradient (ITG) driven turbulence is proposed. Applying mathematical optimization techniques to find extremal solutions in high-dimensional parameter space, the optimal regression parameters in the functional form are determined to be valid for both near- and far-marginal regime of the ITG stability including the Dimits-shift. Then, the regression error of ∼5% is accomplished. In addition, it is clarified that the intensity ratio of the zonal flow and turbulence potential intensity is a crucial factor to determine the reproduction accuracy

Microinstabilities in hydrogen- and helium-dominated multi-ion-species plasmas in LHD

The ion scale microinstabilities in the large helical device (LHD) are investigated by the gyrokinetic simulations for the multi-ion-species plasmas including hydrogen, helium, and impurity ions. The observations in the LHD experiments show that the ion temperature increases with the decreases of the ratio of hydrogen density to helium density. It is found from the linear gyrokinetic simulations with the multi-ion-species and real-mass kinetic electrons in the LHD discharges that the growth rates of the ion scale microinstabilities are reduced for the helium-dominated multi-species plasma compared with the hydrogen-dominated one. In addition to the differences of the conditions including the temperature, the density profiles, and the temperature ratio between both plasmas, due to the dependence on the mass number and the electric charge of the mixed ion species, the mixing length estimates obtained from the linear simulations predicts smaller ion thermal diffusivity for the helium-dominated plasma than the hydrogen-dominated one in the hydrogen gyro-Bohm unit, which is consistent with the experimental results

Simulation studies on temperature profile stiffness in ITG turbulent transport of helical plasmas for flux-matching technique

In the framework of the flux-matching method, which is a useful way for the validation of the gyrokinetic turbulence simulations, it is strongly demanded to evaluate the plasma profile sensitivity of the transport coefficients obtained in the employed simulation model within the profile gradient ranges estimated from the experimental observations. The sensitivity causes the plasma profile stiffness for wide ranges of the transport fluxes. In the nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations for the ion temperature gradient (ITG) turbulence in the Large Helical Device (LHD) [Takeiri et al., Nucl. Fusion 57, 102023 (2017)], it is found that the temperature gradients around the experimental nominal observations are slightly larger than the threshold of the instability, and the ion heat diffusivities are quite sensitive to the temperature gradient. The growth rates of the instability, the generations of the zonal flows, and the sensitivities of the transport coefficients to the temperature profiles depend on the radial locations, the employed simulation models, and the field configurations. Specifically, in the optimized LHD field configuration, the sensitivities are relaxed in the outer radial region due to the enhancement of the zonal flows and the reduction of the ITG instability. In order to estimate the range of the temperature gradients possible given the experimentally obtained data of the temperature with errorbars, the statistical technique, Akaike\u27s Information Criterion [H. Akaike, in Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Information Theory, edited by B. N. Petrov and F. Caski (Akadimiai Kiado, Budapest, 1973), pp. 267–281] is applied. Against the range of the temperature gradients, the flux-matching method to predict the temperature gradient in helical plasmas is demonstrated