Discoveries from the exploration of gyrokinetic momentum transport

G. M. Staebler, R. E. Waltz, J. E. Kinsey

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

16 Scopus citations

Abstract

The momentum transport due to gyroradius scale turbulence in tokamak plasmas is very complex. In general, some type of breaking of the parity of the gyrokinetic equation under simultaneous reflection of the poloidal angle and the sign of the parallel velocity phase space coordinate (poloidal parity) is always involved. There are three distinct types of poloidal parity breaking effects. In this paper, all three types of poloidal parity breaking are explored using the quasi-linear trapped gyro-Landau fluid G. M. Staebler, Phys. Plasmas 12, 102508 (2005) transport code. Selected results are verified with full nonlinear turbulence simulations using the gyro J. Candy, J. Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003) gyrokinetic code. The observable properties like an energy pinch driven by a parallel velocity shear and a dependence of momentum transport on the direction of the ion grad-B drift relative to the X-point location in single null divertor geometry have been discovered.

Original languageEnglish
Article number056106
JournalPhysics of Plasmas
Volume18
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2011
Externally publishedYes

Funding

This work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy under DE-FG02-95ER54309. The authors thank Jeff Candy for doing the gyro runs in Fig. .

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