'Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI)'
Doi
Abstract
A new code, the Neoclassical Ion-Electron Solver (NIES), has been written to solve for stationary, axisymmetric distribution functions (f ) in the conventional banana regime for both ions and elec trons using a set of drift-kinetic equations (DKEs) with linearized Fokker-Planck-Landau collision operators. Solvability conditions on the DKEs determine the relevant non-adiabatic pieces of f (called h ). We work in a 4D phase space in which Ψ defines a flux surface, θ is the poloidal angle, v is the total velocity referenced to the mean flow velocity, and λ is the dimensionless magnetic moment parameter. We expand h in finite elements in both v and λ#21; . The Rosenbluth potentials, φ#8; and ψ, which define the integral part of the collision operator, are expanded in Legendre series in cos χ , where #31;χ is the pitch angle, Fourier series in cos #18;θ , and finite elements in v . At each ψ , we solve a block tridiagonal system for hi (independent of fe ), then solve another block tridiagonal system for he (dependent on fi ). We demonstrate that such a formulation can be accurately and efficiently solved. NIES is coupled to the MHD equilibrium code JSOLVER [J. DeLucia, et al., J. Comput. Phys. 37 , pp 183-204 (1980).] allowing us to work with realistic magnetic geometries. The bootstrap current is calculated as a simple moment of the distribution function. Results are benchmarked against the Sauter analytic formulas and can be used as a kinetic closure for an MHD code (e.g., M3D-C1 [S.C. Jardin, et al ., Computational Science & Discovery, 4 (2012).])