Sarah Newton

Understanding the effect of sheared flow on microinstabilities

The competition between the drive and stabilization of plasma microinstabilities by sheared flow is investigated, focusing on the ion temperature gradient mode. Using a twisting mode representation in sheared slab geometry, the characteristic equations have been formulated for a dissipative fluid model, developed rigorously from the gyrokinetic equation. They clearly show that perpendicular flow shear convects perturbations along the field at a speed we denote by Mcs (where cs is the sound speed), whilst parallel flow shear enters as an instability driving term analogous to the usual temperature and density gradient effects. For sufficiently strong perpendicular flow shear, M > 1, the propagation of the system characteristics is unidirectional and no unstable eigenmodes may form. Perturbations are swept along the field, to be ultimately dissipated as they are sheared ever more strongly. Numerical studies of the equations also reveal the existence of stable regions when M < 1, where the driving terms conflict. However, in both cases transitory perturbations exist, which could attain substantial amplitudes before decaying. Indeed, for M 1, they are shown to exponentiate times. This may provide a subcritical route to turbulence in tokamaks.

Effect of Partially Screened Nuclei on Fast-electron Dynamics

We analyze the dynamics of fast electrons in plasmas containing partially ionized impurity atoms, where the screening effect of bound electrons must be included. We derive analytical expressions for the deflection and slowing-down frequencies, and show that they are increased significantly compared to the results obtained with complete screening, already at subrelativistic electron energies. Furthermore, we show that the modifications to the deflection and slowing down frequencies are of equal importance in describing the runaway current evolution. Our results greatly affect fast-electron dynamics and have important implications, e.g., for the efficacy of mitigation strategies for runaway electrons in tokamak devices, and energy loss during relativistic breakdown in atmospheric discharges.

Alfvénic instabilities driven by runaways in fusion plasmas

Runaway particles can be produced in plasmas with large electric fields. Here, we address the possibility that such runaway ions and electrons excite Alfvenic instabilities. The magnetic perturbation induced by these modes can enhance the loss of runaways. This may have important implications for the runaway electron beam formation in tokamak disruptions.

Collisional bulk ion transport and poloidal rotation driven by neutral beam injection

Neutral beam injection (NBI) is known to significantly affect radial transport in a tokamak plasma. Furthermore, recent observations have shown poloidal velocities, in the presence of NBI, significantly in excess of the standard neoclassical value. Motivated by this, the additional collisional radial bulk ion fluxes of particles, heat and toroidal angular momentum, and the poloidal velocity, driven by fast ions from NBI have been evaluated for a low-collisionality, pure plasma, with strong toroidal rotation and arbitrary aspect ratio. Higher order velocity space structure of the fast ion distribution function can be significant, whilst the effects of toroidal acceleration caused by strong NBI dominate at large aspect ratio. The driven poloidal velocity depends strongly on system parameters, becoming larger at higher beam density and lower beam energy.

Neoclassical momentum transport in an impure rotating tokamak plasma

It is widely believed that transport barriers in tokamak plasmas are caused by radial electric-field shear, which is governed by angular momentum transport. Turbulence is suppressed in the barrier, and ion thermal transport is comparable to the neoclassical prediction, but experimentally angular momentum transport has remained anomalous. With this motivation, the collisional transport matrix is calculated for a low collisionality plasma with collisional impurity ions. The bulk plasma toroidal rotation velocity is taken to be subsonic, but heavy impurities undergo poloidal redistribution due to the centrifugal force. The impurities give rise to off-diagonal terms in the transport matrix, which cause the plasma to rotate spontaneously. At conventional aspect ratio, poloidal impurity redistribution increases the angular momentum flux by a factor up to e−3∕2 over previous predictions, making it comparable to the “banana” regime heat flux. The flux is primarily driven by radial pressure and temperature gradients.

Plasma rotation from momentum transport by neutrals in tokamaks

Neutral atoms can strongly influence the intrinsic rotation and radial electric field at the tokamak edge. Here, we present a framework to investigate these effects when the neutrals dominate the momentum transport. We explore the parameter space numerically, using highly flexible model geometries and a state of the art kinetic solver. We find that the most important parameters controlling the toroidal rotation and electric field are the major radius where the neutrals are localized and the plasma collisionality. This offers a means to influence the rotation and electric field by, for example, varying the radial position of the X-point to change the major radius of the neutral peak.

Ideal magnetohydrodynamic stability of configurations without nested flux surfaces

Existing numerical tools for calculating the MHD stability of magnetically confined plasmas generally assume the existence of nested flux surfaces. These tools are therefore not immediately applicable to configurations with magnetic islands or regions with an ergodic magnetic field. However, in practice, these islands or ergodic regions are often small, and their effect on MHD stability can then be evaluated using a perturbation theory developed in the present paper. This procedure allows the effect of the broken magnetic topology on the stability of each eigenmode to be calculated without requiring any knowledge about the perturbed eigenfunctions.

Impurity transport and plasma flow in a mixed collisionality stellarator plasma

The accumulation of impurities in the core of magnetically confined plasmas, resulting from standard collisional transport mechanisms, is a known threat to their performance as fusion energy sources. Whilst the axisymmetric tokamak systems have been shown to benefit from the effect of temperature screening, that is an outward flux of impurities driven by the temperature gradient, impurity accumulation in stellarators was thought to be inevitable, driven robustly by the inward pointing electric field characteristic of hot fusion plasmas. We have shown in Helander et al. (Phys. Rev. Lett, vol. 118, 2017a, 155002) that such screening can in principle also appear in stellarators, in the experimentally relevant mixed collisionality regime, where a highly collisional impurity species is present in a low collisionality bulk plasma. Details of the analytic calculation are presented here, along with the effect of the impurity on the bulk ion flow, which will ultimately affect the bulk contribution to the bootstrap current.

Numerical calculation of ion runaway distributions

Ions accelerated by electric fields (so-called runaway ions) in plasmas may explain observations in solar flares and fusion experiments; however, limitations of previous analytic work have prevented definite conclusions. In this work, we describe a numerical solver of the 2D non-relativistic linearized Fokker-Planck equation for ions. It solves the initial value problem in velocity space with a spectral-Eulerian discretization scheme, allowing arbitrary plasma composition and time-varying electric fields and background plasma parameters. The numerical ion distribution function is then used to consider the conditions for runaway ion acceleration in solar flares and tokamak plasmas. Typical time scales and electric fields required for ion acceleration are determined for various plasma compositions, ion species, and temperatures, and the potential for excitation of toroidal Alfven eigenmodes during tokamak disruptions is considered.

Stellarator bootstrap current and plasma flow velocity at low collisionality

The bootstrap current and flow velocity of a low-collisionality stellarator plasma are calculated. As far as possible, the analysis is carried out in a uniform way across all low-collisionality regimes in general stellarator geometry, assuming only that the confinement is good enough that the plasma is approximately in local thermodynamic equilibrium. It is found that conventional expressions for the ion flow speed and bootstrap current in the low-collisionality limit are accurate only in the 1/nu -collisionality regime and need to be modified in the root-nu-regime. The correction due to finite collisionality is also discussed and is found to scale as nu^2/5