Olivier Izacard

Dynamics of ion temperature gradient turbulence and transport with a static magnetic island

Understanding the interaction mechanisms between large-scale magnetohydrodynamic instabilities and small-scale drift-wave microturbulence is essential for predicting and optimizing the performance of magnetic confinement based fusion energy experiments. We report progress on understanding these interactions using both analytic theory and numerical simulations performed with the BOUT++ [Dudson et al., Comput. Phys. Commun. 180, 1467 (2009)] framework. This work focuses upon the dynamics of the ion temperature gradient instability in the presence of a background static magnetic island, using a weakly electromagnetic two-dimensional five-field fluid model. It is found that the island width must exceed a threshold size (comparable with the turbulent correlation length in the no-island limit) to significantly impact the turbulence dynamics, with the primary impact being an increase in turbulent fluctuation and heat flux amplitudes. The turbulent radial ion energy flux is shown to localize near the X-point, but...

Kinetic corrections from analytic non-Maxwellian distribution functions in magnetized plasmas

In magnetized plasma physics, almost all developed analytic theories assume a Maxwellian distribution function (MDF) and in some cases small deviations are described using the perturbation theory. The deviations with respect to the Maxwellian equilibrium, called kinetic effects, are required to be taken into account especially for fusion reactor plasmas. Generally, because the perturbation theory is not consistent with observed steady-state non-Maxwellians, these kinetic effects are numerically evaluated by very central processing unit (CPU)-expensive codes, avoiding the analytic complexity of velocity phase space integrals. We develop here a new method based on analytic non-Maxwellian distribution functions constructed from non-orthogonal basis sets in order to (i) use as few parameters as possible, (ii) increase the efficiency to model numerical and experimental non-Maxwellians, (iii) help to understand unsolved problems such as diagnostics discrepancies from the physical interpretation of the parameter...