Microturbulence study of the isotope effect

Journal Article · Thu Jan 15 00:00:00 EST 2015 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4905637· OSTI ID:22407991

Bustos, A.; Bañón Navarro, A.; Görler, T. ^[1]; Jenko, F. ^[1]; Hidalgo, C. ^[2]

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1. Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik, Boltzmannstrasse 2, 85748 Garching (Germany)
2. Laboratorio Nacional de Fusion, CIEMAT, 28040 Madrid (Spain)

The influence of the ion mass on the dynamics of magnetized plasmas is an important challenge in fusion research. The discrepancies between the improvement of the magnetic confinement with the ion mass in tokamak experiments and diffusive turbulent transport predictions have remained unexplained for several decades. We refer to this phenomenon as the isotope effect. In this paper, we study this effect with gyrokinetic theory using the GENE code. We find several sets of plasma parameters that correspond to low wavenumber turbulence for which the isotope effect is present, although the intensity is smaller than the experimental observations. We also relate these results to the zonal flow intensity of the system, which is characterized by the average shear flow rate.

• OSTI ID: 22407991
• Journal Information: Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 22, Issue 1; Other Information: (c) 2015 EURATOM; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

42 ENGINEERING
DYNAMICS
EXPERIMENTAL DATA
FLOW RATE
MAGNETIC CONFINEMENT
MASS
PLASMA
SHEAR
TOKAMAK DEVICES
TRANSPORT
TURBULENCE