1 research outputs found
Local and global Fokker-Planck neoclassical calculations showing flow and bootstrap current modification in a pedestal
In transport barriers, particularly H-mode edge pedestals, radial scale
lengths can become comparable to the ion orbit width, causing neoclassical
physics to become radially nonlocal. In this work, the resulting changes to
neoclassical flow and current are examined both analytically and numerically.
Steep density gradients are considered, with scale lengths comparable to the
poloidal ion gyroradius, together with strong radial electric fields sufficient
to electrostatically confine the ions. Attention is restricted to relatively
weak ion temperature gradients (but permitting arbitrary electron temperature
gradients), since in this limit a delta-f (small departures from a Maxwellian
distribution) rather than full-f approach is justified. This assumption is in
fact consistent with measured inter-ELM H-Mode edge pedestal density and ion
temperature profiles in many present experiments, and is expected to be
increasingly valid in future lower collisionality experiments. In the numerical
analysis, the distribution function and Rosenbluth potentials are solved for
simultaneously, allowing use of the exact field term in the linearized
Fokker-Planck collision operator. In the pedestal, the parallel and poloidal
flows are found to deviate strongly from the best available conventional
neoclassical prediction, with large poloidal variation of a different form than
in the local theory. These predicted effects may be observable experimentally.
In the local limit, the Sauter bootstrap current formulae appear accurate at
low collisionality, but they can overestimate the bootstrap current near the
plateau regime. In the pedestal ordering, ion contributions to the bootstrap
and Pfirsch-Schluter currents are also modified