Kinetic modeling of 3D equilibria in a tokamak

Abstract

External resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) can modify the magnetic topology in a tokamak. In this case the magnetic field cannot generally be described by ideal MHD equilibrium equations in the vicinity of resonant magnetic surfaces where parallel and perpendicular relaxation timescales are comparable. Usually, resistive MHD models are used to describe these regions. In the present work, a kinetic model is used for this purpose. Within this model, plasma response, current and charge density are computed with help of a Monte Carlo method, where guiding center orbit equations are solved using a semianalytical geometrical integrator. Besides its higher efficiency in comparison to usual integrators this method is not sensitive to noise in field quantities. The computed charges and currents are used to calculate the electromagnetic field with help of a finite element solver. A preconditioned iterative scheme is applied to search for a self-consistent solution. The discussed method is aimed at the nonlinear kinetic description of RMPs in experiments on Edge Localized Mode (ELM) mitigation by external perturbation coil systems without simplification of the device geometry.