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Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of reversed shear Alfven eigenmodes in DIII-D tokamak

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Abstract

Global gyrokinetic simulations of reversed shear Alfven eigenmodes (RSAE) excited by energetic particles (EP) in the DIII-D discharge #159,243 find that self-generated zonal flows dominate the RSAE nonlinear saturation. Effects of Coulomb collisions are negligible since the effective EP collision frequency is much smaller than the RSAE linear growth rate. Nonlinear interactions of multiple unstable RSAEs lower the saturation amplitude and resulting EP transport, and nonlinearly generate toroidal Alfven eigenmodes (TAE) and ellipticity induced Alfven eigenmodes (EAE). In both single mode and multiple modes simulations, the initial RSAE saturation amplitude and associated EP transport are an order of magnitude higher than the experimental observations, but quickly diminish within 0.1 ms after nonlinear saturation due to the formation of coherent phase space structures that flatten the EP distribution function at resonances. Results from these simulations of the RSAE only show that additional dissipation such as background micro-turbulence is needed to sustain the quasi-steady state RSAE amplitude and EP transport observed in this DIII-D experiment.

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The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank W. W. Heidbrink and G. R. McKee for providing experimental data and for useful discussions. This work was supported by DOE SciDAC ISEP and INCITE, used computing resources at ORNL (DOE Contract DE-AC05-00OR22725) and NERSC (DOE Contract DE-AC02-05CH11231), and experimental data from DIII-D National Fusion Facility (DOE Contract DE-FC02-04ER54698). This report was prepared as an account of work sponsored by an agency of the United States Government. Neither the United States Government nor any agency thereof, nor any of their employees, makes any warranty, express or implied, or assumes any legal liability or responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, or usefulness of any information, apparatus, product, or process disclosed, or represents that its use would not infringe privately owned rights. Reference herein to any specific commercial product, process, or service by trade name, trademark, manufacturer, or otherwise, does not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by the United States Government or any agency thereof. The views and opinions of authors expressed herein do not necessarily state or reflect those of the United States Government or any agency thereof.

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U.S. Department of Energy, DE-AC05-00OR22725, Zhihong Lin, DE-AC02-05CH11231, Zhihong Lin.

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  1. G. Brochard

    Present address: ITER organisation, Route de Vinon de Verdon, CS 90 046 13067, Saint-Paul Lez Durance, France

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  1. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Irvine, CA, 92697, USA

    P. Liu, X. Wei, Z. Lin, G. Brochard, G. J. Choi & J. H. Nicolau

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Liu, P., Wei, X., Lin, Z. et al. Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of reversed shear Alfven eigenmodes in DIII-D tokamak. Rev. Mod. Plasma Phys. 7, 15 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s41614-023-00117-4

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