Global kinetic ballooning mode simulations in BOUT++

Abstract

We report on simulation results of a 3+1 gyro-Landau-fluid (GLF) model in BOUT++ framework, which contributes to increasing the physics understanding of the edge turbulence. We find that there is no second stability region of kinetic ballooning modes (KBM) in the concentric circular geometry. The first unstable β of KBM decreases below the ideal ballooning mode threshold with increasing . In order to study the KBM in the real tokamak equilibrium, we find that the approximation of shifted circular geometry () is not valid for a high β global equilibrium near the second stability region of KBM. Thus we generate a series of real equilibria from a global equilibrium solver CORSICA, including both Shafranov shift and elongation effects, but not including bootstrap current. In these real equilibria, the second stability region of KBM are observed in our global linear simulations. The most unstable mode for different β are the same while the mode number spectrum near the second stability region is wider than the case near the first stability region. The nonlinear simulations show that the energy loss of an ELM keeps increasing with β, because the linear drive of the turbulence remains strong for the case near the second stability region during profile evolution.