Jacob King

First-order finite-Larmor-radius fluid modeling of tearing and relaxation in a plasma pincha)

Drift and Hall effects on magnetic tearing, island evolution, and relaxation in pinch configurations are investigated using a non-reduced first-order finite-Larmor-radius (FLR) fluid model with the nonideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with rotation, open discussion (NIMROD) code [C.R. Sovinec and J. R. King, J. Comput. Phys. 229, 5803 (2010)]. An unexpected result with a uniform pressure profile is a drift effect that reduces the growth rate when the ion sound gyroradius (ρs) is smaller than the tearing-layer width. This drift is present only with warm-ion FLR modeling, and analytics show that it arises from ∇B and poloidal curvature represented in the Braginskii gyroviscous stress. Nonlinear single-helicity computations with experimentally relevant ρs values show that the warm-ion gyroviscous effects reduce saturated-island widths. Computations with multiple nonlinearly interacting tearing fluctuations find that m = 1 core-resonant-fluctuation amplitudes are reduced by a factor of two relative to single-f...

First-order finite-Larmor-radius effects on magnetic tearing in pinch configurations

The linear and nonlinear evolution of a single-helicity tearing mode in a cylindrical, force-free pinch are investigated using a fluid model with first-order finite-Larmor-radius corrections. Linear results computed with the nimrod [nonideal magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) with rotation, open discussion] code [Sovinec et al., J. Comput. Phys. 195, 355 (2004)] produce a regime at small ρs where the growth rate is reduced relative to resistive MHD, though the Hall term is not significant. The leading order contributions from ion gyroviscosity may be expressed as a drift associated with ∇B0 and poloidal curvature for experimentally relevant β=0.1, S~105-106 force-free equilibria. The heuristic analytical dispersion relation, γ4(γ-iω*gv)=γMHD5 where ω*gv is the gyroviscous drift frequency, confirms numerical results. The behavior of our cylindrical computations at large ρs corroborates previous analytic slab studies where an enhanced growth rate and radially localized Hall dynamo are predicted. Similar to previous...

Effect of scrape-off-layer current on reconstructed tokamak equilibrium

Methods are described that extend fields from reconstructed equilibria to include scrape-off-layer current through extrapolated parametrized and experimental fits. The extrapolation includes both the effects of the toroidal-field and pressure gradients which produce scrape-off-layer current after recomputation of the Grad-Shafranov solution. To quantify the degree that inclusion of scrape-off-layer current modifies the equilibrium, the χ-squared goodness-of-fit parameter is calculated for cases with and without scrape-off-layer current. The change in χ-squared is found to be minor when scrape-off-layer current is included; however, flux surfaces are shifted by up to 3 cm. The impact on edge modes of these scrape-off-layer modifications is also found to be small and the importance of these methods to nonlinear computation is discussed.

Improvements to the ICRH antenna time-domain 3D plasma simulation model

We present a summary of ongoing improvements to the 3D time-domain plasma modeling software that has been used to look at ICRH antennas on Alcator C-Mod, NSTX, and ITER [1]. Our past investigations have shown that in low density cases where the slow wave is propagating, strong amplitude lower hybrid resonant fields can occur. Such a scenario could result in significant parasitic power loss in the SOL. The primary resonance broadening in this case is likely collisions with neutral gas, and thus we are upgrading the model to include realistic neutral gas in the SOL, in order to provide a better understanding of energy balance in these situations. Related to this, we are adding a temporal variation capability to the local plasma density in front of the antenna in order to investigate whether the near fields of the antenna could modify the local density sufficiently to initiate a low density situation. We will start with a simple scalar ponderomotive potential density expulsion model [2] for the density evolu...