Numerical simulations of fishbones driven by fast ions in negative triangularity tokamak

Abstract

The discharges with negative triangularity have lower turbulence induced transport and better energy confinement, so the tokamak with negative triangularity is recognized to be a better choice for future fusion device. In order to explore the features of the energetic particle driven instabilities with negative triangularity, the kinetic-magnetohydrodynamic hybrid code M3D-K is used to investigate the linear instability and nonlinear evolution of the fishbone driven by energetic ions with different triangularity. Based on EAST-like parameters, it is found that the negative triangularity destabilizes the ideal internal kink mode, but stabilizes the fishbone instability. Nonlinear simulations show that the fishbone instability with negative triangularity is hard to saturate without fluid nonlinearity. The possible explanation is that the orbits of fast ions are located more centrally with negative triagularity, so the energy exchange between energetic ions and the fishbone is more efficient than that with positive triangularity. These simulation results demonstrate that the negative triangularity does not have an obvious advantage over the positive triangularity, with the fishbone driven by energetic particles considered.