14 research outputs found
Linear and nonlinear excitation of TAE modes by external electromagnetic perturbations using ORB5
The excitation of toroidicity induced Alfv{\'e}n eigenmodes (TAEs) using
prescribed external electromagnetic perturbations (hereafter ``antenna") acting
on a confined toroidal plasma as well as its nonlinear couplings to other modes
in the system is studied. The antenna is described by an electrostatic
potential resembling the target TAE mode structure along with its corresponding
parallel electromagnetic potential computed from Ohm's law. Numerically stable
long-time linear simulations are achieved by integrating the antenna within the
framework of a mixed representation and pullback scheme [A. Mishchenko, et al.,
Comput. Phys. Commun. \textbf{238} (2019) 194]. By decomposing the plasma
electromagnetic potential into symplectic and Hamiltonian parts and using Ohm's
law, the destabilizing contribution of the potential gradient parallel to the
magnetic field is canceled in the equations of motion. Besides evaluating the
frequencies as well as growth/damping rates of excited modes compared to
referenced TAEs, we study the interaction of antenna-driven modes with fast
particles and indicate their margins of instability. Furthermore, we show first
nonlinear simulations in the presence of a TAE-like antenna exciting other TAE
modes, as well as Global Alfv\'en Eigenmodes (GAE) having different toroidal
wave numbers from that of the antenna
Triangularity effects on global flux-driven gyrokinetic simulations
On the road to fusion energy production, many alternative scenarios have been investigated in order to address certain well-known problems of tokamak devices; among which, anomalous transport, ELMs and disruptions. The studies on plasma shaping fall into this effort.
In particular, it has been experimentally observed that when operating in L mode, negative triangularity (NT) features better confinement properties than positive triangularity (PT). However, even though the trend is quite clear, a complete and satisfying theoretical explanation for this experimental findings is still lacking.
With the aim of understanding and describing these improvements starting from first principles, we present the first comparison between PT and NT with global flux-driven gyrokinetic simulations performed with the ORB5 code.
The numerical setup includes: electrostatic turbulence, kinetic trapped electrons, non-linear collisional operator, ECRH source, limiter and wall as boundary conditions. The simulations have been performed on ideal MHD equilibria and kinetic profiles inspired by TCV experiments, in a mixed ITG-TEM regime.
First analysis reveal a strong reduction of transport in NT; while at the edge PT shows superdiffusivity, NT does not. The limiter plays an important role that has to be further clarified