Description
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For the first time, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of I-mode plasmas are performed and compared with experiment. I-mode is a high confinement regime, featuring energy confinement similar to H-mode, but without enhanced particle and impurity particle confinement [D. G. Whyte et al., Nucl. Fusion 50, 105005 (2010)]. As a consequence of the separation between heat and particle transport, I-mode exhibits several favorable characteristics compared to H-mode. The nonlinear gyrokinetic code GYRO [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003)] is used to explore the effects of E × B shear and profile stiffness in I-mode and compare with L-mode. The nonlinear GYRO simulations show that I-mode core ion temperature and electron temperature profiles are more stiff than L-mode core plasmas. Scans of the input E × B shear in GYRO simulations show that E × B shearing of turbulence is a stronger effect in the core of I-mode than L-mode. The nonlinear simulations match the observed reductions in long wavelength density fluctuation levels across the L-I transition but underestimate the reduction of long wavelength electron temperature fluctuation levels. The comparisons between experiment and gyrokinetic simulations for I-mode suggest that increased E × B shearing of turbulence combined with increased profile stiffness are responsible for the reductions in core turbulence observed in the experiment, and that I-mode resembles H-mode plasmas more than L-mode plasmas with regards to marginal stability and temperature profile stiffness.
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Notes
| CITATION: Physics of Plasmas > Volume 22, Issue 5 > 10.1063/1.4921150
PUBLISHED VERSION DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4921150
PSFC REPORT PSFC/JA-15-67
Experimental data sets were collected at the Alcator C-Mod tokamak, a DOE Office of Science user facility, supported by DOE Contract DE-FC02-99ER54512-CMOD. The nonlinear gyrokinetic calculations with the GYRO code were performed using the National Energy Research Scientiffc Computing Center, which is supported by the Offce of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-05CH11231.
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