Global gyrokinetic simulations of trapped-electron mode and trapped-ion mode microturbulence

Thomas Drouot (1) , Etienne Gravier (1) , Thierry Réveillé (1) , Mathieu Sarrat (1) , Mégane Collard (1) , Pierre Bertrand (1) , T. Cartier-Michaud (2) , Philippe Ghendrih (2) , Y. Sarazin (2) , Xavier Garbet (2)

1 IJL - Institut Jean Lamour
2 IRFM - Institut de Recherche sur la Fusion par confinement Magnétique

This paper presents a reduced kinetic model, which describes simultaneously trapped-ion (TIM) and trapped-electron (TEM) driven modes. Interestingly, the model enables the study of a full f problem for ion and electron trapped particles at very low numerical cost. The linear growth rate obtained with the full f nonlinear code Trapped Element REduction in Semi Lagrangian Approach is successfully compared with analytical predictions. Moreover, nonlinear results show some basic properties of collisionless TEM and TIM turbulence in tokamaks. A competition between streamer-like structures and zonal flows is observed for TEM and TIM turbulence. Zonal flows are shown to play an important role in suppressing the nonlinear transport and strongly depend on the temperature ratio T-e/T-i.

Domaines: Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Thomas Drouot, Etienne Gravier, Thierry Réveillé, Mathieu Sarrat, Mégane Collard, et al.. Global gyrokinetic simulations of trapped-electron mode and trapped-ion mode microturbulence. Physics of Plasmas, 2015, 22 (8), ⟨10.1063/1.4927920⟩. ⟨hal-01285770⟩