SciDAC GSEP: Gyrokinetic Simulation of Energetic Particle Turbulence and Transport

Technical Report · Sat Dec 30 04:00:00 EST 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1417467· OSTI ID:1417467

Lin, Zhihong ^[1]

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1. Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States); University of California, Irvine

Energetic particle (EP) confinement is a key physics issue for burning plasma experiment ITER, the crucial next step in the quest for clean and abundant energy, since ignition relies on self-heating by energetic fusion products (α-particles). Due to the strong coupling of EP with burning thermal plasmas, plasma confinement property in the ignition regime is one of the most uncertain factors when extrapolating from existing fusion devices to the ITER tokamak. EP population in current tokamaks are mostly produced by auxiliary heating such as neutral beam injection (NBI) and radio frequency (RF) heating. Remarkable progress in developing comprehensive EP simulation codes and understanding basic EP physics has been made by two concurrent SciDAC EP projects GSEP funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Fusion Energy Science (OFES), which have successfully established gyrokinetic turbulence simulation as a necessary paradigm shift for studying the EP confinement in burning plasmas. Verification and validation have rapidly advanced through close collaborations between simulation, theory, and experiment. Furthermore, productive collaborations with computational scientists have enabled EP simulation codes to effectively utilize current petascale computers and emerging exascale computers. We review here key physics progress in the GSEP projects regarding verification and validation of gyrokinetic simulations, nonlinear EP physics, EP coupling with thermal plasmas, and reduced EP transport models. Advances in high performance computing through collaborations with computational scientists that enable these large scale electromagnetic simulations are also highlighted. These results have been widely disseminated in numerous peer-reviewed publications including many Phys. Rev. Lett. papers and many invited presentations at prominent fusion conferences such as the biennial International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Fusion Energy Conference and the annual meeting of the American Physics Society, Division of Plasma Physics (APS-DPP).

• Research Organization: Univ. of California, Irvine, CA (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES) (SC-24)
• DOE Contract Number: FC02-08ER54976
• OSTI ID: 1417467
• Report Number(s): DOE-UCI--54976
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY