Turbulence and transport in enhanced confinement regimes of tokamaks: Simulation and theory

摘要

An integrated program of theory and computation has been developed to understand the physics responsible for the favorable confinement trends exhibited by, for example, enhanced reversed shear (ERS) plasmas in TFTR and DIII-D. This paper reports on (1) the quantitative assessment of ExB shear suppression of turbulence by comparison of the linear growth rate calculated from the gyrofluid/comprehensive kinetic codes and the experimentally measured shearing rate in TFTR ERS plasmas; (2) the first self-consistent nonlinear demonstration of ion temperature gradient turbulence reduction due to (angle)P(sub i) driven ExB shear by the global gyrokinetic simulation; (3) a revised neoclassical analysis and gyrokinetic particle simulation results in agreement with trends in ERS plasmas; (4) Shafranov shift induced stabilization of trapped electron mode in ERS plasmas calculated by the gyrofluid code; and (5) new nonlinear gyrokinetic equations for turbulence in core transport barriers.