Since 18 of December 2019 conferences.iaea.org uses Nucleus credentials. Visit our help pages for information on how to Register and Sign-in using Nucleus.

# 27th IAEA Fusion Energy Conference - IAEA CN-258

22-27 October 2018
Mahatma Mandir Conference Centre
Asia/Kolkata timezone
CONFERENCE MATERIAL NOW AVAILABLE!

## Gyrokinetic Analysis and Simulations of Pedestals

24 Oct 2018, 17:40
20m
Mahatma Mandir Conference Centre

#### Mahatma Mandir Conference Centre

Oral THC - Magnetic Confinement Theory and Modelling: Confinement

### Speaker

Dr Mike Kotschenreuther (Institute for Fusion Studies)

### Description

Major progress has been made in understanding the pedestal transport in several areas. 1) For the first time, the instabilities that dominate energy transport in present experimental pedestals are determined, using identifying ratios of the transport they produce in different channels - their “transport fingerprint”. These are derived from the drift kinetic equation for pedestal parameters, and corroborated by gyrokinetic simulations using GENE[1]. For the typical case where the electron density sources are relatively small compared to the energy sources, MHD-like modes (such as KBM) cannot dominate pedestal energy transport. The analysis is applied to experimental observations from multiple devices, and also, in detail to two DIII-D pedestals, considering transport in multiple channels, measured fluctuations and pedestal equilibrium reconstructions. Micro-tearing modes (MTM) and Electron Temperature Gradient (ETG) modes dominate energy transport, rather than KBM. Multiple disparate experimental observations can be explained and unified using this analysis, including, surprisingly, density transport from applied Resonant Magnetic Perturbations (RMP). 2) Gyrokinetic simulations of velocity shear suppression of ITG for pedestal equilibria, using GENE[1], find excellent agreement, in detail, with the decorrelation theory of Zhang and Mahajan[2]. This physics-based theory can thus be exploited to estimate/predict turbulent transport in new regimes. In a controlled $\rho^*$ scan (velocity shear ~ $\rho^*$), the suppressed heat flux from ITG modes scales much more poorly than gyro-Bohm, so that it may become relatively large at the low $\rho^*$ of burning plasmas, unlike present experiments. 3) Hence, a detailed examination of the properties of ITG/TEM modes in pedestals and ITBs with high $\beta_{pol}$ has been undertaken. Unlike core modes, pedestal electrostatic modes are slab-like: destabilization results from parallel resonances, not curvature. Consequently, the density gradients are stabilizing in pedestals, and so is high $\beta_{pol}$, impurities and impurity gradients. Routes to optimize confinement in fusion relevant tokamaks, for both for inductive and steady state operations, are discussed. [1]Jenko F., Dorland W., Kotschenreuther M., et. al., Phys. Plasmas 7 (2000) 1904 [2]Y. Z. Zhang and S. M. Mahajan, Physics of Fluids B, 5, (1993) 2000
Country or International Organization United States of America TH/2-2

### Primary author

Dr Mike Kotschenreuther (Institute for Fusion Studies)

### Co-authors

Dr Ahmed Diallo (PPPL) Dr Costanza Maggi (CCFE) Dr David Hatch (Institute for Fusion Studies, University of Texas at Austin) Dr Florian Koechl (Vienna University of Technology, Institute of Atomic and Subatomic Physics) Jerry Hughes (MIT PSFC) Mr R.J. Groebner (General Atomics) Prof. S. M. Mahajan (University of Texas at Austin) Dr Samuli Saarelma (CCFE) Dr Vassili Parail (CCFE) Xing Liu (University of Texas)

### Presentation Materials

 IAEA 2018 916B11.pdf Summary slide mtk.pptx