G. G. Plunk

Resilience of quasi-isodynamic stellarators against trapped-particle instabilities.

It is shown that in perfectly quasi-isodynamic stellarators, trapped particles with a bounce frequency much higher than the frequency of the instability are stabilizing in the electrostatic and collisionless limit. The collisionless trapped-particle instability is therefore stable as well as the ordinary electron-density-gradient-driven trapped-electron mode. This result follows from the energy balance of electrostatic instabilities and is thus independent of all other details of the magnetic geometry.

Collisionless microinstabilities in stellarators. III. The ion-temperature-gradient mode

We investigate the linear theory of the ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) mode, with the goal of developing a general understanding that may be applied to stellarators. We highlight the Wendelstein 7X (W7-X) device. Simple fluid and kinetic models that follow closely from existing literature are reviewed and two new first-principle models are presented and compared with results from direct numerical simulation. One model investigates the effect of regions of strong localized shear, which are generic to stellarator equilibria. These “shear spikes” are found to have a potentially significant stabilizing affect on the mode; however, the effect is strongest at short wavelengths perpendicular to the magnetic field, and it is found to be significant only for the fastest growing modes in W7-X. A second model investigates the long-wavelength limit for the case of negligible global magnetic shear. The analytic calculation reveals that the effect of the curvature drive enters at second order in the drift frequency, co...

Energy Transfer and Dual Cascade in Kinetic Magnetized Plasma Turbulence

The question of how nonlinear interactions redistribute the energy of fluctuations across available degrees of freedom is of fundamental importance in the study of turbulence and transport in magnetized weakly collisional plasmas, ranging from space settings to fusion devices. In this Letter, we present a theory for the dual cascade found in such plasmas, which predicts a range of new behavior that distinguishes this cascade from that of neutral fluid turbulence. These phenomena are explained in terms of the constrained nature of spectral transfer in nonlinear gyrokinetics. Accompanying this theory are the first observations of these phenomena, obtained via direct numerical simulations using the gyrokinetic code AstroGK. The basic mechanisms that are found provide a framework for understanding the turbulent energy transfer that couples scales both locally and nonlocally.

Landau damping in a turbulent setting

To address the problem of Landau damping in kinetic turbulence, we consider the forcing of the linearized Vlasov equation by a stationary random source. It is found that the time-asymptotic density response is dominated by resonant particle interactions that are synchronized with the source. The energy consumption of this response is calculated, implying an effective damping rate, which is the main result of this paper. Evaluating several cases, it is found that the effective damping rate can differ from the Landau damping rate in magnitude and also, remarkably, in sign. A limit is demonstrated in which the density and current become phase-locked, which causes the effective damping to be negligible; this result offers a fresh perspective from which to reconsider recent observations of kinetic turbulence satisfying critical balance.

Considering fluctuation energy as a measure of gyrokinetic turbulence

In gyrokinetic theory, there are two quadratic measures of fluctuation energy, left invariant under nonlinear interactions, that constrain turbulence. In a recent work (Plunk and Tatsuno 2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 165003) we reported on the novel consequences that this constraint has for the direction and locality of spectral energy transfer. This paper builds on that previous work. We provide a detailed analysis in support of the results of Plunk and Tatsuno (2011 Phys. Rev. Lett. 106 165003), but significantly broaden the scope and use additional methods to address the problem of energy transfer. The perspective taken here is that the fluctuation energies are not merely formal invariants of an idealized model (two-dimensional gyrokinetics (Plunk et al 2010 J. Fluid Mech. 664 407–35)) but also general measures of gyrokinetic turbulence, i.e. quantities that can be used to predict the behavior of turbulence. Although many questions remain open, this paper collects evidence in favor of this perspective by demonstrating in several contexts that constrained spectral energy transfer governs the dynamics.

Collisionless microinstabilities in stellarators I. Analytical theory of trapped-particle modes

This is the first of two papers about collisionless, electrostatic micro-instabilities in stellarators, with an emphasis on trapped-particle modes. It is found that, in so-called maximum-

Distinct Turbulence Saturation Regimes in Stellarators

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The universal instability in general geometry

configurations, trapped-particle instabilities are absent in large regions of parameter space. Quasi-isodynamic stellarators have this property (approximately), and the theory predicts that trapped electrons are stabilizing to all eigenmodes with frequencies below the electron bounce frequency. The physical reason is that the bounce-averaged curvature is favorable for all orbits, and that trapped electrons precess in the direction opposite to that in which drift waves propagate, thus precluding wave-particle resonance. These considerations only depend on the electrostatic energy balance, and are independent of all geometric properties of the magnetic field other than the maximum-

Generalized universal instability: transient linear amplification and subcritical turbulence

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Geometric stabilization of the electrostatic ion-temperature-gradient driven instability. I. Nearly axisymmetric systems

condition. However, if the aspect ratio is large and the instability phase velocity differs greatly from the electron and ion thermal speeds, it is possible to derive a variational form for the frequency showing that stability prevails in a yet larger part of parameter space than what follows from the energy argument. Collisionless trapped-electron modes should therefore be more stable in quasi-isodynamic stellarators than in tokamaks.