F.I. Parra M. Barnes E.G. Highcock A.A. Schekochihin S.C. Cowley
The effect of momentum injection on the temperature gradient in tokamak plasmas is studied. A plausible scenario for transitions to reduced transport regimes is proposed. The transition happens when there is sufficient momentum input so that the velocity shear can suppress or reduce the turbulence. However, it is possible to drive too much velocity…
PublishedAlessandro Zocco Alexander A. Schekochihin
A minimal model for magnetic reconnection and, generally, low-frequency dynamics in low-beta plasmas is proposed. The model combines analytical and computational simplicity with physical realizability: it is a rigorous limit of gyrokinetics for plasma beta of order the electron-ion mass ratio. The model contains collisions and can be used both in t…
PublishedE. G. Highcock M. Barnes F. I. Parra A. A. Schekochihin C. M. Roach et al.
First-principles numerical simulations are used to describe a transport bifurcation in a differentially rotating tokamak plasma. Such a bifurcation is more probable in a region of zero magnetic shear than one of finite magnetic shear, because in the former case the component of the sheared toroidal flow that is perpendicular to the magnetic field h…
PublishedE. G. Highcock M. Barnes A. A. Schekochihin F. I. Parra C. M. Roach S.C. Cowley
The effect of flow shear on turbulent transport in tokamaks is studied numerically in the experimentally relevant limit of zero magnetic shear. It is found that the plasma is linearly stable for all nonzero flow shear values, but that subcritical turbulence can be sustained nonlinearly at a wide range of temperature gradients. Flow shear increases …
PublishedT. Tatsuno W. Dorland A. A. Schekochihin G. G. Plunk M. Barnes S. C. Cowley G. G. Howes
Electrostatic turbulence in weakly collisional, magnetized plasma can be interpreted as a cascade of entropy in phase space, which is proposed as a universal mechanism for dissipation of energy in magnetized plasma turbulence. When the nonlinear decorrelation time at the scale of the thermal Larmor radius is shorter than the collision time, a broad…
PublishedM. Barnes I. G. Abel W. Dorland D. R. Ernst G. W. Hammett P. Ricci B. N. Rogers A. A. Schekochihin T. Tatsuno
A set of key properties for an ideal dissipation scheme in gyrokinetic simulations is proposed, and implementation of a model collision operator satisfying these properties is described. This operator is based on the exact linearized test-particle collision operator, with approximations to the field-particle terms that preserve conservation laws an…
PublishedI. G. Abel M. Barnes S. C. Cowley W. Dorland A. A. Schekochihin
A new analytically and numerically manageable model collision operator is developed specifically for turbulence simulations. The like-particle collision operator includes both pitch-angle scattering and energy diffusion and satisfies the physical constraints required for collision operators: it conserves particles, momentum, and energy, obeys Boltz…
PublishedI. G. Abel M. Barnes S. C. Cowley W. Dorland G. W. Hammett A. A. Schekochihin T. Tatsuno
We motivate the need to include collisional dissipation in gyrokinetic turbulence simulations, and constract criteria for a physically vaUd model of such dissipation. A new analytically manageable operator satisfying those criteria is presented and transformed into gyrokinetic variables. The form of conservation laws for collision operators in gyro…
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