Research of turbulent transport due to dissipative trapped electron mode in tokamak plasmas

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to study turbulent transport for laboratory plasmas in toroidal devices by gyrokinetic analyses. Linear analysis is performed to clarify the dominant mode for tokamak plasmas. The dissipative trapped electron mode (d-TEM) and the ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode are predicted using the Sugama collision model operator [Sugama et al., Phys. Plasmas 16, 112503 (2009)]. Nonlinear gyrokinetic analysis is used to quantify turbulent transport. The nonlinear simulation results show the levels of particle and energy transport, where the d-TEM and ITG mode are unstable. The effect of zonal flows is studied by the linear and nonlinear simulation results. The results of the analysis are compared when two types of model collision operator, which are the Sugama and Lenard–Bernstein [Phys. Rev. 112, 1456 (1958)] collision model operators, are used. In this study, the simulation results using the Sugama collision operator show a stronger effect of the zonal flows on the turbulent transport than those using the Lenard–Bernstein collision operator, as predicted by the linear simulation result such as the zonal flow decay time.