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Title: Turbulence, transport, and zonal flows in the Madison symmetric torus reversed-field pinch

Journal Article · · Physics of Plasmas
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5000252· OSTI ID:1523258
ORCiD logo [1];  [1];  [1];  [2]
  1. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States). Dept. of Physics
  2. Jakob-Brucker-Gymnasium, Kaufbeuren (Germany); Max Planck Inst. for Plasma Physics, Garching (Germany)

The robustness and the effect of zonal flows in trapped electron mode (TEM) turbulence and Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG) turbulence in the reversed-field pinch (RFP) are investigated here from numerical solutions of the gyrokinetic equations with and without magnetic external perturbations introduced to model tearing modes. For simulations without external magnetic field perturbations, zonal flows produce a much larger reduction of transport for the density-gradient-driven TEM turbulence than they do for the ITG turbulence. Zonal flows are studied in detail to understand the nature of their strong excitation in the RFP and to gain insight into the key differences between the TEM- and ITG-driven regimes. The zonal flow residuals are significantly larger in the RFP than in tokamak geometry due to the low safety factor. Collisionality is seen to play a significant role in the TEM zonal flow regulation through the different responses of the linear growth rate and the size of the Dimits shift to collisionality, while affecting the ITG only minimally. A secondary instability analysis reveals that the TEM turbulence drives zonal flows at a rate that is twice that of the ITG turbulence. In addition to interfering with zonal flows, the magnetic perturbations are found to obviate an energy scaling relation for fast particles.

Research Organization:
Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES); National Science Foundation (NSF)
Grant/Contract Number:
FG02-85ER53212; TG-PHY130027
OSTI ID:
1523258
Alternate ID(s):
OSTI ID: 1414036
Journal Information:
Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 24, Issue 12; ISSN 1070-664X
Publisher:
American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 14 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (2)

Development of a multi-channel capacitive probe for electric field measurements with fine spatial and high time resolution journal October 2018
Persistence of Ion Temperature Gradient Turbulent Transport at Finite Normalized Pressure journal July 2019

Figures / Tables (13)


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