Gyrokinetic simulations of ion and impurity transport

Abstract

A systematic study of turbulent particle and energy transport in both pure and multicomponent plasmas is presented. In this study, gyrokinetic results from the GYRO code [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J. Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003)] are supplemented with those from the GLF23 [R. E. Waltz, G. M. Staebler, W. Dorland et al., Phys. Plasmas 4, 2482 (1997)] transport model, as well as from quasilinear theory. Various results are obtained. The production of a particle pinch driven by temperature gradients (a thermal pinch) is demonstrated, and further shown to be weakened by finite electron collisionality. Helium transport and the effects of helium density gradient and concentration in a deuterium plasma are examined. Interestingly, it is found that the simple D-v (diffusion versus convective velocity) model of impurity flow is consistent with results obtained from nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations. Also studied is the transport in a 50-50 deuterium-tritium plasma, where a symmetry breaking is observed indicating the potential for fuel separation in a burning plasma. Quasilinear theory together with linear simulations shows that the symmetry breaking which enhances the tritium confinement arises largely from finite-Larmor-radius effects. To justify the numerical methods used in the paper, a variety of linear benchmarks and nonlinear grid refinement studies are detailed.