Neoclassical plateau regime transport in a tokamak pedestal

Abstract

In tokamak pedestals with subsonic flows the radial scale of plasma profiles can be comparable to the ion poloidal Larmor radius, thereby making the radial electrostatic field so strong that the E × B drift has to be retained in the ion kinetic equation in the same order as the parallel streaming. The modifications of neoclassical plateau regime transport—such as the ion heat flux and the poloidal ion and impurity flows—are evaluated in the presence of a strong radial electric field. The altered poloidal ion flow can lead to a significant increase in the bootstrap current in the pedestal where the spatial profile variation is strong because of the enhanced coefficient of the ion temperature gradient term near the electric field minimum. Unlike the banana regime, orbit squeezing does not affect the plateau regime results.