Neoclassical momentum transport in an impure rotating tokamak plasma

Neoclassical momentum transport in an impure rotating tokamak plasma

Neoclassical momentum transport in an impure rotating tokamak plasma 150 150 UKAEA Opendata

Neoclassical momentum transport in an impure rotating tokamak plasma

It is widely believed that transport barriers in tokamak plasmas are caused by radial electric-field shear, which is governed by angular momentum transport. Turbulence is suppressed in the barrier, and ion thermal transport is comparable to the neoclassical prediction, but experimentally angular momentum transport has remained anomalous. With this motivation, the collisional transport matrix is calculated for a low collisionality plasma with collisional impurity ions. The bulk plasma toroidal rotation velocity is taken to be subsonic, but heavy impurities undergo poloidal redistribution due to the centrifugal force. The impurities give rise to off-diagonal terms in the transport matrix, which cause the plasma to rotate spontaneously. At conventional aspect ratio, poloidal impurity redistribution increases the angular momentum flux by a factor up to -3/2 over previous predictions, making it comparable to the “banana” regime heat flux. The flux is primarily driven by radial pressure and temperature gradients.

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12/01/2006