Trapped electron mode driven electron heat transport in JET: experimental investigation and gyro-kinetic theory validation

Abstract

The main purpose of this work is to study the dependence of trapped electron modes (TEM) threshold and of electron stiffness on the most relevant plasma parameters. Dedicated transport experiments based on heat flux scans and Te modulation have been performed in JET in TEM dominated plasmas with pure ICRH electron heating and a numerical study using gyrokinetic simulations has been performed with the code GKW. Using multilinear regressions on the experimental data, the stabilizing effect of magnetic shear predicted by theory for our plasma parameters is confirmed while no significant effect of safety factor was found. Good quantitative agreement is found between the TEM thresholds found in the experiments and calculated with linear GKW simulations. Non-linear simulations have given further confirmation of the threshold values and allowed comparison with the values of stiffness found experimentally. Perturbative studies using RF power modulation indicate the existence of an inward convective term for the electron heat flux. Adding NBI power, ion temperature gradient (ITG) modes become dominant and a reduction of with respect to pure ICRH, TEM dominant discharges has been experimentally observed, in spite of increased total electron power. Possible explanations are discussed.