Daniel Tegnered

Effects of the equilibrium model on impurity transport in tokamaks

Gyrokinetic simulations of ion temperature gradient mode and trapped electron mode driven impurity transport in a realistic tokamak geometry are presented and compared with results using simplified geometries. The gyrokinetic results, obtained with the GENE code in both linear and non-linear modes are compared with data and analysis for a dedicated impurity injection discharge at JET. The impact of several factors on heat and particle transport is discussed, lending special focus to tokamak geometry and rotational shear. To this end, results using s-alpha and concentric circular equilibria are compared with results with magnetic geometry from a JET experiment. To further approach experimental conditions, non-linear gyrokinetic simulations are performed with collisions and a carbon background included. The impurity peaking factors, computed by finding local density gradients corresponding to zero particle flux, are discussed. The impurity peaking factors are seen to be reduced by a factor of ~2 in realistic geometry compared with the simplified geometries, due to a reduction of the convective pinch. It is also seen that collisions reduce the peaking factor for low-Z impurities, while increasing it for high charge numbers, which is attributed to a shift in the transport spectra towards higher wavenumbers with the addition of collisions. With the addition of roto-diffusion, an overall reduction of the peaking factors is observed, but this decrease is not sufficient to explain the flat carbon profiles seen at JET.

Impact of a hollow density profile on turbulent particle fluxes: Gyrokinetic and fluid simulations

Hollow density profiles may occur in connection with pellet fuelling and L to H transitions. A positive density gradient could potentially stabilize the turbulence or change the relation between convective and diffusive fluxes, thereby reducing the turbulent transport of particles towards the center, making the pellet fuelling scheme inefficient. In the present work, the particle transport driven by Ion Temperature Gradient/Trapped Electron (ITG/TE) mode turbulence in hollow density profiles is studied by fluid as well as gyrokinetic simulations. The fluid model used, an extended version of the Weiland transport model, Extended Drift Wave Model (EDWM), incorporates an arbitrary number of ion species in a multi-fluid description and an extended wavelength spectrum. The fluid model, which is fast and hence suitable for use in predictive simulations, is compared to gyrokinetic simulations using the code GENE. Typical tokamak parameters are used based on the Cyclone Base Case. Parameter scans in key plasma parameters like plasma β, R/LT, and magnetic shear are investigated. In addition, the effects of a fast species are studied and global ITG simulations in a simplified physics description are performed in order to investigate nonlocal effects. It is found that β in particular, has a stabilizing effect in the negative R/Ln region. Both nonlinear GENE and EDWM simulations show a decrease in inward flux for negative R/Ln and a change in the direction from inward to outward for positive R/Ln. Moreover, the addition of fast particles was shown to decrease the inward main ion particle flux in the positive gradient region further. This might have serious consequences for pellet fuelling of high β plasmas. Additionally, the heat flux in global ITG turbulence simulations indicates that nonlocal effects can play a different role from usual in connection with pellet fuelling.

Gyrokinetic modelling of stationary electron and impurity profiles in tokamaks

Particle transport due to Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG)/Trapped Electron Mode (TEM) turbulence is investigated using the gyrokinetic code GENE. Both a reduced quasilinear treatment and nonlinear simulations are performed for typical tokamak parameters corresponding to ITG dominated turbulence. The gyrokinetic results are compared and contrasted with results from a computationally efficient fluid model. A selfconsistent treatment is used, where the stationary local profiles are calculated corresponding to zero particle flux simultaneously for electrons and trace impurities. The scaling of the stationary profiles with magnetic shear, safety factor, electron-to-ion temperature ratio, collisionality, toroidal sheared rotation, plasma β, triangularity, and elongation is investigated. In addition, the effect of different main ion mass on the zero flux condition is discussed. The electron density gradient can significantly affect the stationary impurity profile scaling. It is therefore expected that a selfconsistent treatment will yield results more comparable to experimental results for parameter scans where the stationary background density profile is sensitive. This is shown to be the case in scans over magnetic shear, collisionality, elongation, and temperature ratio, for which the simultaneous zero flux electron and impurity profiles are calculated. A slight asymmetry between hydrogen, deuterium, and tritium with respect to profile peaking is obtained, in particular, for scans in collisionality and temperature ratio.

Fluid and gyrokinetic modelling of particle transport in plasmas with hollow density profiles

Hollow density profiles occur in connection with pellet fuelling and L to H transitions. A positive density gradient could potentially stabilize the turbulence or change the relation between convective and diffusive fluxes, thereby reducing the turbulent transport of particles towards the center, making the fuelling scheme inefficient. In the present work, the particle transport driven by ITG/TE mode turbulence in regions of hollow density profiles is studied by fluid as well as gyrokinetic simulations. The fluid model used, an extended version of the Weiland transport model, Extended Drift Wave Model (EDWM), incorporates an arbitrary number of ion species in a multi-fluid description, and an extended wavelength spectrum. The fluid model, which is fast and hence suitable for use in predictive simulations, is compared to gyrokinetic simulations using the code GENE. Typical tokamak parameters are used based on the Cyclone Base Case. Parameter scans in key plasma parameters like plasma β, R/LT , and magnetic shear are investigated. It is found that β in particular has a stabilizing effect in the negative R/Ln region, both nonlinear GENE and EDWM show a decrease in inward flux for negative R/Ln and a change of direction from inward to outward for positive R/Ln . This might have serious consequences for pellet fuelling of high β plasmas.

Comparative Gyrokinetic Analysis of JET Baseline H-mode Core Plasmas with Carbon Wall and ITER-Like Wall

Following the change of plasma facing components at JET from a carbon wall (CW) to a metal ITER-like wall (ILW) a deterioration of global confinement has been observed for H-mode baseline experiments. The deterioration has been correlated with a degradation of pedestal confinement with lower electron temperatures at the top of the edge barrier region. In order to investigate the change in core confinement, heat transport due to Ion Temperature Gradient (ITG)/Trapped Electron Mode (TEM) turbulence is investigated using the gyrokinetic code GENE. Two pairs of CW and ILW discharges that are matched according to several global parameters are simulated at mid radius. The simulations included effects of collisions, finite beta, realistic geometries, and impurities. A sensitivity study is performed with respect to the key dimensionless parameters in the matched pairs. The combined effect of the relative change in these parameters is that the ITG mode is destabilized in the ILW discharges compared to the CW discharges. This is also reflected in nonlinear simulations where the ILW discharges show higher normalized ion and electron heat fluxes and larger stiffness. The ion energy confinement time within rho = 0.5 is found to be comparable while the electron confinement time is shorter for the ILW discharges. The core confinement in the ILW discharges is expected to improve if the edge pedestal is recovered since that would favourably change the key plasma parameters that now serve to destabilize them.