Numerical simulation of the effect of pellet injection on ELMs

We report on numerical simulation studies of the dynamical behavior of edge localized modes (ELMs) under the influence of repetitive injection of pellets. In our nonlinear 2-fluid model the ELMs are excited by introducing a particle source in the confinement region and a particle sink in the edge region. The injection of pellets is simulated by periodically raising the edge density in a pulsed manner. We find that when the edge density is raised to twice the normal edge density with a duty cycle (on time:off time) of 1:2, the ELMs are generated on an average at a faster rate and with reduced amplitudes. These changes lead to significant improvements in the plasma beta indicative of an improvement in the energy confinement due to pellet injection. Concurrently, the plasma density and temperature profiles also get significantly modified. A comparative study is made of the nature of ELM dynamics for different magnitudes of edge density enhancements. We also discuss the relative impact on ELMs from resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) compared to pellet injection in terms of changes in the plasma temperature, density, location of the ELMs and the nonlinear spectral transfer of energies

Azimuthally symmetric MHD and two-fluid equilibria with arbitrary flows

Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and two-fluid quasi-neutral equilibria with azimuthal symmetry, gravity and arbitrary ratios of (nonrelativistic) flow speed to acoustic and Alfven speeds are investigated. In the two-fluid case, the mass ratio of the two species is arbitrary, and the analysis is therefore applicable to electron-positron plasmas. The methods of derivation can be extended in an obvious manner to several charged species. Generalized Grad-Shafranov equations, describing the equilibrium magnetic field, are derived. Flux function equations and Bernoulli relations for each species, together with Poisson's equation for the gravitational potential, complete the set of equations required to determine the equilibrium. These are straightforward to solve numerically. The two-fluid system, unlike the MHD system, is shown to be free of singularities. It is demonstrated analytically that there exists a class of incompressible MHD equilibria with magnetic field-aligned flow. A special sub--class first identified by S. Chandrasekhar, in which the flow speed is everywhere equal to the local Alfven speed, is compatible with virtually any azimuthally symmetric magnetic configuration. Potential applications of this analysis include extragalactic and stellar jets, and accretion disks.Comment: 18 pages, 0 figure

Electron Inertial Effects on Rapid Energy Redistribution at Magnetic X-points

The evolution of non-potential perturbations to a current-free magnetic X-point configuration is studied, taking into account electron inertial effects as well as resistivity. Electron inertia is shown to have a negligible effect on the evolution of the system whenever the collisionless skin depth is less than the resistive scale length. Non-potential magnetic field energy in this resistive MHD limit initially reaches equipartition with flow energy, in accordance with ideal MHD, and is then dissipated extremely rapidly, on an Alfvenic timescale that is essentially independent of Lundquist number. In agreement with resistive MHD results obtained by previous authors, the magnetic field energy and kinetic energy are then observed to decay on a longer timescale and exhibit oscillatory behavior, reflecting the existence of discrete normal modes with finite real frequency. When the collisionless skin depth exceeds the resistive scale length, the system again evolves initially according to ideal MHD. At the end of this ideal phase, the field energy decays typically on an Alfvenic timescale, while the kinetic energy (which is equally partitioned between ions and electrons in this case) is dissipated on the electron collision timescale. The oscillatory decay in the energy observed in the resistive case is absent, but short wavelength structures appear in the field and velocity profiles, suggesting the possibility of particle acceleration in oppositely-directed current channels. The model provides a possible framework for interpreting observations of energy release and particle acceleration on timescales down to less than a second in the impulsive phase of solar flares.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figure

Field-guided proton acceleration at reconnecting X-points in flares

An explicitly energy-conserving full orbit code CUEBIT, developed originally to describe energetic particle effects in laboratory fusion experiments, has been applied to the problem of proton acceleration in solar flares. The model fields are obtained from solutions of the linearised MHD equations for reconnecting modes at an X-type neutral point, with the additional ingredient of a longitudinal magnetic field component. To accelerate protons to the highest observed energies on flare timescales, it is necessary to invoke anomalous resistivity in the MHD solution. It is shown that the addition of a longitudinal field component greatly increases the efficiency of ion acceleration, essentially because it greatly reduces the magnitude of drift motions away from the vicinity of the X-point, where the accelerating component of the electric field is largest. Using plasma parameters consistent with flare observations, we obtain proton distributions extending up to gamma-ray-emitting energies (>1MeV). In some cases the energy distributions exhibit a bump-on-tail in the MeV range. In general, the shape of the distribution is sensitive to the model parameters.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Solar Physic

CENTORI: a global toroidal electromagnetic two-fluid plasma turbulence code

A new global two-fluid electromagnetic turbulence code, CENTORI, has been developed for the purpose of studying magnetically-confined fusion plasmas on energy confinement timescales. This code is used to evolve the combined system of electron and ion fluid equations and Maxwell equations in toroidal configurations with axisymmetric equilibria. Uniquely, the equilibrium is co-evolved with the turbulence, and is thus modified by it. CENTORI is applicable to tokamaks of arbitrary aspect ratio and high plasma beta. A predictor-corrector, semi-implicit finite difference scheme is used to compute the time evolution of fluid quantities and fields. Vector operations and the evaluation of flux surface averages are speeded up by choosing the Jacobian of the transformation from laboratory to plasma coordinates to be a function of the equilibrium poloidal magnetic flux. A subroutine, GRASS, is used to co-evolve the plasma equilibrium by computing the steady-state solutions of a diffusion equation with a pseudo-time derivative. The code is written in Fortran 95 and is efficiently parallelized using Message Passing Interface (MPI). Illustrative examples of output from simulations of a tearing mode in a large aspect ratio tokamak plasma and of turbulence in an elongated conventional aspect ratio tokamak plasma are provided.Comment: 9 figure

Modified Zakharov equations for plasmas with a quantum correction

Quantum Zakharov equations are obtained to describe the nonlinear interaction between quantum Langmuir waves and quantum ion-acoustic waves. These quantum Zakharov equations are applied to two model cases, namely the four-wave interaction and the decay instability. In the case of the four-wave instability, sufficiently large quantum effects tend to suppress the instability. For the decay instability, the quantum Zakharov equations lead to results similar to those of the classical decay instability except for quantum correction terms in the dispersion relations. Some considerations regarding the nonlinear aspects of the quantum Zakharov equations are also offered.Comment: 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Physics of Plasmas (2004

Nonlinear dispersive regularization of inviscid gas dynamics

Ideal gas dynamics can develop shock-like singularities with discontinuous density. Viscosity typically regularizes such singularities and leads to a shock structure. On the other hand, in 1d, singularities in the Hopf equation can be non-dissipatively smoothed via KdV dispersion. Here, we develop a minimal conservative regularization of 3d ideal adiabatic flow of a gas with polytropic exponent $\gamma$. It is achieved by augmenting the Hamiltonian by a capillarity energy $\beta(\rho) (\nabla \rho)^2$. The simplest capillarity coefficient leading to local conservation laws for mass, momentum, energy and entropy using the standard Poisson brackets is $\beta(\rho) = \beta_*/\rho$ for constant $\beta_*$. This leads to a Korteweg-like stress and nonlinear terms in the momentum equation with third derivatives of $\rho$, which are related to the Bohm potential and Gross quantum pressure. Just like KdV, our equations admit sound waves with a leading cubic dispersion relation, solitary and periodic traveling waves. As with KdV, there are no steady continuous shock-like solutions satisfying the Rankine-Hugoniot conditions. Nevertheless, in 1d, for $\gamma = 2$, numerical solutions show that the gradient catastrophe is averted through the formation of pairs of solitary waves which can display approximate phase-shift scattering. Numerics also indicate recurrent behavior in periodic domains. These observations are related to an equivalence between our regularized equations (in the special case of constant specific entropy potential flow in any dimension) and the defocussing nonlinear Schrodinger equation (cubically nonlinear for $\gamma = 2$), with $\beta_*$ playing the role of $\hbar^2$. Thus, our regularization of gas dynamics may be viewed as a generalization of both the single field KdV & NLS equations to include the adiabatic dynamics of density, velocity, pressure & entropy in any dimension.Comment: 19 pages, 20 figure file

Existence and consequences of Coulomb pairing of electrons in a solid

It is shown from first principles that, in the periodic potential of a crystalline solid, short-range (i.e., screened) binary Coulomb interactions can lead to a two-electron bound state. It is further suggested that these composite bosonic states (charge -2e, and typically spin zero) could mediate an effectively attractive interaction between pairs of conduction electrons close to the Fermi level. This necessarily short range attractive interaction, which is crucially dependent on the band structure of the solid, and is complementary to the phonon-mediated one, may provide a source for the existence and properties of short correlation-length electron pairs (analogous to but distinct from Cooper pairs) needed to understand high temperature superconductivity. Several distinctive and observable characteristics of the proposed pairing scheme are discussed

Chaotic Interaction of Langmuir Solitons and Long Wavelength Radiation

In this work we analyze the interaction of isolated solitary structures and ion-acoustic radiation. If the radiation amplitude is small solitary structures persists, but when the amplitude grows energy transfer towards small spatial scales occurs. We show that transfer is particularly fast when a fixed point of a low dimensional model is destroyed.Comment: LaTex + 4 eps file

The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam recurrence and related phenomena for 1D shallow-water waves in a finite basin

In this work, different regimes of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) recurrence are simulated numerically for fully nonlinear "one-dimensional" potential water waves in a finite-depth flume between two vertical walls. In such systems, the FPU recurrence is closely related to the dynamics of coherent structures approximately corresponding to solitons of the integrable Boussinesq system. A simplest periodic solution of the Boussinesq model, describing a single soliton between the walls, is presented in an analytical form in terms of the elliptic Jacobi functions. In the numerical experiments, it is observed that depending on a number of solitons in the flume and their parameters, the FPU recurrence can occur in a simple or complicated manner, or be practically absent. For comparison, the nonlinear dynamics of potential water waves over nonuniform beds is simulated, with initial states taken in the form of several pairs of colliding solitons. With a mild-slope bed profile, a typical phenomenon in the course of evolution is appearance of relatively high (rogue) waves, while for random, relatively short-correlated bed profiles it is either appearance of tall waves, or formation of sharp crests at moderate-height waves.Comment: revtex4, 10 pages, 33 figure