Test particle dynamics in low-frequency tokamak turbulence

Abstract

We study the evolution of one million test particles in a turbulent plasma simulation, using the gyrokinetic code Trapped Element REduction in Semi-Lagrangian Approach (TERESA), as a method to get insights into the type of transport governing the plasma. TERESA (Trapped Element REduction in Semi-Lagrangian Approach) is a collisionless global 4D code which treats the trapped particles kinetically, while the passing particles are considered adiabatic. The Vlasov-Poisson system of equations is averaged over the cyclotron and the trapped particle's bounce motion, and thus, the model focuses on slow phenomena of the order of the toroidal precession motion of the banana orbits. We initialize the test particles, which are de facto “test banana-centers,” at a time of the simulation when the plasma is turbulent. We impose an initial temperature and density gradients, and only the Trapped Ion Mode (TIM) instability can develop in this system. We then calculate the Mean Squared Displacement of the test particles as a function of time in order to obtain a random walk diffusion coefficient. We observe that the radial diffusion of the test particles depends on their toroidal precession kinetic energy (E), in such a way that the transport of particles is dominated by a strong, relatively narrow peak at the resonant energies. A radial particle diffusion flux is then calculated and compared to the total radial particle flux accounting for all the transport processes such as diffusion and advection which is obtained directly from the TERESA code. We can thus compare the diffusive contribution to the particle flux against the nondiffusive contributions. The results show that the total flux is essentially diffusive which is consistent with our simulation setup aiming for “global turbulence.” Both fluxes present a peak around a resonance energy ER≈1.74Ti between the TIM and the particles. Both thermal and high-energy particles do not contribute significantly to radial transport.