Rotation Generation and Transport in Tokamak Plasmas

Download or read book Rotation Generation and Transport in Tokamak Plasmas written by Yuri Anatoly Podpaly and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plasma toroidal rotation is a factor important for plasma stability and transport, but it is still a fairly poorly understood area of physics. This thesis focuses on three aspects of rotation: momentum transport, Ohmic rotation reversals, and LHCD induced rotation. Momentum transport is approached in a semi-empirical method through the development of the "Toy Model." The "Toy Model" assumes that the toroidal momentum is transported via diffusive and convective profiles, and, using assumptions about the diffusive and convective terms, it can generate the profiles of the residual stress or source as a function of space and time. Several resultant source profile calculations are shown for SSEP sweeps, rotation reversals, H-modes, and I-modes. Generally, it is observed that the convective profiles do not greatly improve the fits to the data, and that source profiles have peaks around the steep core rotation gradient region of the plasma. Rotation reversals, spontaneous reversals of the rotation direction during the Ohmic phase, are also described in this work. It is seen that they are related to the Linear Ohmic Confinement (LOC) to Saturated Ohmic Confinement (SOC) regime changeover. This relation is supported through linear gyrokinetic simulations that show that the co- to counter- reversal coincides with a change from marginally electron to ion diamagnetic direction most unstable modes which is believed to play a role in the LOC to SOC explanation as well. Lower Hybrid Current Drive (LHCD) induced rotation is also described, including the first experimental observations of bi-directional rotation on a single tokamak. These observations help to explain differences in rotation seen among the various devices running lower hybrid. The LHCD rotation reverses direction as a function of plasma current, and this occurs in a similar parameter space as the Ohmic rotation reversal; it also has turbulence changes that are reminiscent of the Ohmic reversal as well. This suggests that LHCD is, in fact, causing the plasma to transition from the ITG dominated regime to the TEM dominated regime, which explains the rotation differences. These experiments and models provide new tools to understand rotation transport and generation in tokamaks.