Simulation of microtearing turbulence in national spherical torus experiment

Guttenfelder, W.; Candy, J.; Kaye, S. M.; Nevins, W. M.; Wang, E.; Zhang, J.; Bell, R. E.; Crocker, N. A.; Hammett, G. W.; LeBlanc, B. P.; Mikkelsen, D. R.; Ren, Y.; Yuh, H.

doi:10.1063/1.3694104

Title: Simulation of microtearing turbulence in national spherical torus experiment

Journal Article · Fri Apr 27 00:00:00 EDT 2012 · Physics of Plasmas

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3694104· OSTI ID:1564859

Guttenfelder, W. ^[1]; Candy, J. ^[2]; Kaye, S. M. ^[1]; Nevins, W. M. ^[3]; Wang, E. ^[3]; Zhang, J. ^[4]; Bell, R. E. ^[1]; Crocker, N. A. ^[4]; Hammett, G. W. ^[1]; LeBlanc, B. P. ^[1]; Mikkelsen, D. R. ^[1]; Ren, Y. ^[1]; Yuh, H. ^[5]

Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States)
Nova Photonics Inc., Princeton, NJ (United States)

Thermal energy confinement times in National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) dimensionless parameter scans increase with decreasing collisionality. While ion thermal transport is neoclassical, the source of anomalous electron thermal transport in these discharges remains unclear, leading to considerable uncertainty when extrapolating to future spherical tokamak (ST) devices at much lower collisionality. Linear gyrokinetic simulations find microtearing modes to be unstable in high collisionality discharges. First non-linear gyrokinetic simulations of microtearing turbulence in NSTX show they can yield experimental levels of transport. Magnetic flutter is responsible for almost all the transport (~98%), perturbed field line trajectories are globally stochastic, and a test particle stochastic transport model agrees to within 25% of the simulated transport. Most significantly, microtearing transport is predicted to increase with electron collisionality, consistent with the observed NSTX confinement scaling. While this suggests microtearing modes may be the source of electron thermal transport, the predictions are also very sensitive to electron temperature gradient, indicating the scaling of the instability threshold is important. In addition, microtearing turbulence is susceptible to suppression via sheared E × B flows as experimental values of E × B shear (comparable to the linear growth rates) dramatically reduce the transport below experimental values. Refinements in numerical resolution and physics model assumptions are expected to minimize the apparent discrepancy. In cases where the predicted transport is strong, calculations suggest that a proposed polarimetry diagnostic may be sensitive to the magnetic perturbations associated with the unique structure of microtearing turbulence.

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Research Organization:: Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States). Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility (OLCF); Univ. of California, Oakland, CA (United States); Princeton Univ., NJ (United States); UT-Battelle LLC/ORNL, Oak Ridge, TN (United States); Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States); Univ. of California, Los Angeles, CA (United States); General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC)

Grant/Contract Number:: AC02-05CH11231; AC02-09CH11466; AC05-00OR22725; AC52-07NA27344; FG02-99ER54527; FG03-95ER54309

OSTI ID:: 1564859

Journal Information:: Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 5; ISSN 1070-664X

Publisher:: American Institute of Physics (AIP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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Cited by: 49 works

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