No Arabic abstract
A long standing puzzle in fusion research comes from experiments where a sudden peripheral electron temperature perturbation is accompanied by an almost simultaneous opposite change in central temperature, in a way incompatible with local transport models. This paper shows these experiments and similar ones are fairly well quantitatively reproduced, when induction effects are incorporated in the total plasma response, alongside standard local diffusive transport, as suggested in earlier work [V.D. Pustovitov, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion {bf 54}, 124036 (2012)].
Global gradient driven GENE gyrokinetic simulations are used to investigate TCV plasmas with negative triangularity. Considering a limited L-mode plasma, corresponding to an experimental triangularity scan, numerical results are able to reproduce the actual transport level over a major fraction of the plasma minor radius for a plasma with $delta_{rm LCFS}=-0.3$ and its equivalent with standard positive triangularity $delta$. For the same heat flux, a larger electron temperature gradient is sustained by $delta<0$, in turn resulting in an improved electron energy confinement. Consistently with the experiments, a reduction of the electron density fluctuations is also seen. Local flux-tube simulations are used to gauge the magnitude of nonlocal effects. Surprisingly, very little differences are found between local and global approaches for $delta>0$, while local results yield a strong overestimation of the heat fluxes when $delta<0$. Despite the high sensitivity of the turbulence level with respect to the input parameters, global effects appear to play a crucial role in the negative triangularity plasma and must be retained to reconcile simulations and experiments. Finally, a general stabilizing effect of negative triangularity, reducing fluxes and fluctuations by a factor dependent on the actual profiles, is recovered.
We analyze how the turbulent transport of $mathbf{E}times mathbf{B}$ type in magnetically confined plasmas is affected by intermittent features of turbulence. The latter are captured by the non-Gaussian distribution $P(phi)$ of the turbulent electric potential $phi$. Our analysis is performed at an analytical level and confirmed numerically using two statistical approaches. We have found that the diffusion is inhibited linearly by intermittency, mainly via the kurtosis of the distribution $P(phi)$. The associated susceptibility for this linear process is shown to be dependent on the poloidal velocity $V_p$ and on the correlation time $tau_c$ with a maxima at the time-of-flight $tau_{fl}$. Intermittency does not affect the Kubo number scaling in the strong regime.
The friction force on a test particle traveling through a plasma that is both strongly coupled and strongly magnetized is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. In addition to the usual stopping power component aligned antiparallel to the velocity, a transverse component that is perpendicular to both the velocity and Lorentz force is observed. This component, which was recently discovered in weakly coupled plasmas, is found to increase in both absolute and relative magnitude in the strongly coupled regime. Strong coupling is also observed to induce a third component of the friction force in the direction of the Lorentz force. These first-principles simulations reveal novel physics associated with collisions in strongly coupled, strongly magnetized, plasmas that are not predicted by existing kinetic theories. The effect is expected to influence macroscopic transport in a number of laboratory experiments and astrophysical plasmas.
Laser produced high-energy-density plasmas may contain strong magnetic fields that affect the energy transport, which can be nonlocal. Models which describe the magnetized nonlocal transport are formally complicated and based on many approximations. This paper presents a more straightforward approach to the description of the electron transport in this regime, based on the extension of a reduced entropic model. The calculated magnetized heat fluxes are compared with the known asymptotic limits and applied for studying of a magnetized nonocal plasma thermalization.
The ability to separate large volumes of mixed species based on atomic mass appears desirable for a variety of emerging applications with high societal impact. One possibility to meet this objective consists in leveraging mass differential effects in rotating plasmas. Beyond conventional centrifugation, rotating plasmas offer in principle additional ways to separate elements based on mass. Single ion orbits show that ion radial mass separation in a uniform magnetized plasma column can be achieved by applying a tailored electric potential profile across the column, or by driving a rotating magnetic field within the column. Furthermore, magnetic pressure and centrifugal effects can be combined in a non-uniform geometry to separate ions based on mass along the field lines. Practical application of these separation schemes hinges on the ability to produce the desirable electric and magnetic field configuration within the plasma column.