Study of turbulence in the high β P discharge using only RF heating on EAST

• Published in: Plasma physics and controlled fusion 2022-04, Vol.64 (4), p.45017
• Main Authors: Zheng, S Y, Zhang, D B, Xue, E B, Yu, L M, Zhang, X M, Huang, J, Xiao, Y, Wu, M Q, Gong, X Z
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: gyrokinetic simulation; high poloidal beta; transport; turbulence
• ISSN: 0741-3335; 1361-6587
• DOI: 10.1088/1361-6587/ac4b07

High poloidal beta scenarios with a favorable energy confinement ( β p ∼ 1.9 , H 98 y 2 ∼ 1.4 ) have been achieved on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak using only radio frequency wave heating. Gyrokinetic simulations are carried out with experimental plasma parameters and tokamak equilibrium data of a typical high β p discharge using the gyrokinetic toroidal code. Linear simulations show that electron-temperature scale length and electron-density scale length destabilize the turbulence, collision effects stabilize the turbulence, and the instability propagates in the electron diamagnetic direction. These properties indicate that the dominant instability in the core of high β p plasma is a collisionless trapped electron mode. Ion thermal diffusivity, calculated by nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, is consistent with the experimental value, in which the electron collision effects play an important role. Further analyses show that instabilities with k θ ρ s > 0.38 are suppressed by collision effects and collision effects reduce the radial correlation length of turbulence, resulting in the suppression of the turbulence.