arXiv subjects

C. M. Roach

Publications and source records attributed to C. M. Roach.

32 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2015

Charge dependence of neoclassical and turbulent transport of light impurities on MAST

Carbon and nitrogen impurity transport coefficients are determined from gas puff experiments carried out during repeat L-mode discharges on the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) and compared against a previous analysis of helium impurity transport on MAST. The impurity density profiles are measured on the low-field side of the plasma, therefore this paper focuses on light impurities where the impact of poloidal asymmetries on impurity transport is predicted to be negligible. A weak screening of carbon and nitrogen is found in the plasma core, whereas the helium density profile is peaked over the entire plasma radius.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2014

Structure of Micro-instabilities in Tokamak Plasmas: Stiff Transport or Plasma Eruptions?

Solutions to a model 2D eigenmode equation describing micro-instabilities in tokamak plasmas are presented that demonstrate a sensitivity of the mode structure and stability to plasma profiles. In narrow regions of parameter space, with special plasma profiles, a maximally unstable mode is found that balloons on the outboard side of the tokamak. This corresponds to the conventional picture of a ballooning mode. However, for most profiles this mode cannot exist and instead a more stable mode is found that balloons closer to the top or bottom of the plasma. Good quantitative agreement with a 1D ballooning analysis is found provided the constraints associated with higher order profile effects, often neglected, are taken into account. A sudden transition from this general mode to the more unstable ballooning mode can occur for a critical flow shear, providing a candidate model for why some experiments observe small plasma eruptions (Edge Localised Modes, or ELMs) in place of large Type I ELMs.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2014

Neoclassical and gyrokinetic analysis of time-dependent helium transport experiments on MAST

Time-dependent helium gas puff experiments have been performed on the Mega Ampere Spherical Tokamak (MAST) during a two point plasma current scan in L-mode and a confinement scan at 900 kA. An evaluation of the He II spectrum line induced by charge exchange suggests anomalous rates of diffusion and inward convection in the outer regions of both L-mode plasmas. Similar rates of diffusion are found in the H-mode plasma, however these rates are consistent with neoclassical predictions. The anomalous inward pinch found in the core of L-mode plasmas is also not apparent in the H-mode core. Linear gyrokinetic simulations of one flux surface in L-mode using the gs2 and gkw codes find that equilibrium flow shear is sufficient to stabilise ITG modes, consistent with BES observations, and suggest that collisionless TEMs may dominate the anomalous helium particle transport. A quasilinear estimate of the dimensionless peaking factor associated with TEMs is in good agreement with experiment. Collisionless TEMs are more stable in H-mode because the electron density gradient is flatter. The steepness of this gradient is therefore pivotal in determining the inward neoclassical particle pinch and the particle flux associated with TEM turbulence.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2014

Using the local gyrokinetic code, GS2, to investigate global ITG modes in tokamaks. (I) s-$α$ model with profile and flow shear effects

This paper combines results from a local gyrokinetic code with analytical theory to reconstruct the global eigenmode structure of the linearly unstable ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) mode with adiabatic electrons. The simulations presented here employ the s-$α$ tokamak equilibrium model. Local gyrokinetic calculations, using GS2 have been performed over a range of radial surfaces, x, and for ballooning phase angle, p, in the range -$π {\leq} p {\leqπ}$, to map out the complex local mode frequency, ${Ω_0(x, p) = ω_0(x, p) + iγ_0(x, p)}$. Assuming a quadratic radial profile for the drive, namely ${η_i = L_n/L_T}$, (holding constant all other equilibrium profiles such as safety factor, magnetic shear etc.), ${Ω_0(x, p)}$ has a stationary point. The reconstructed global mode then sits on the outboard mid plane of the tokamak plasma, and is known as a conventional or isolated mode, with global growth rate, $γ$ ~ Max[${γ_0(x, p)}$], where ${γ_0(x, p)}$ is the local growth rate. Taking the radial variation in other equilibrium profiles (e.g safety factor q(x)) into account, removes the stationary point in ${Ω_0(x, p)}$ and results in a mode that peaks slightly away from the outboard mid-plane with a reduced global growth rate. Finally, the influence of flow shear has also been investigated through a Doppler shift, ${ω_0 \rightarrow ω_0 + nΩ^{\prime}x}$, where n is the toroidal mode number and ${Ω^{\prime}}$ incorporates the effect of flow shear. The equilibrium profile variation introduces an asymmetry to the growth rate spectrum with respect to the sign of ${Ω^{\prime}}$, consistent with recent global gyrokinetic calculations.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2014

Microstability analysis of pellet fuelled discharges in MAST

Reactor grade plasmas are likely to be fuelled by pellet injection. This technique transiently perturbs the profiles, driving the density profile hollow and flattening the edge temperature profile. After the pellet perturbation, the density and temperature profiles relax towards their quasi-steady-state shape. Microinstabilities influence plasma confinement and will play a role in determining the evolution of the profiles in pellet fuelled plasmas. In this paper we present the microstability analysis of pellet fuelled H-mode MAST plasmas. Taking advantage of the unique capabilities of the MAST Thomson scattering system and the possibility of synchronizing the eight lasers with the pellet injection, we were able to measure the evolution of the post-pellet electron density and temperature profiles with high temporal and spatial resolution. These profiles, together with ion temperature profiles measured using a charge exchange diagnostic, were used to produce equilibria suitable for microstability analysis of the equilibrium changes induced by pellet injection. This analysis, carried out using the local gyrokinetic code GS2, reveals that the microstability properties are extremely sensitive to the rapid and large transient excursions of the density and temperature profiles, which also change collisionality and beta e significantly in the region most strongly affected by the pellet ablation.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2013

MHD and Gyro-kinetic Stability of JET Pedestals

The pedestal profile measurements in high triangularity JET plasmas show that with low fuelling the pedestal width decreases during the ELM cycle and with high fuelling it stays constant. In the low fuelling case the pedestal pressure gradient keeps increasing until the ELM crash and in the high fuelling case it initially increases then saturates during the ELM cycle. Stability analysis reveals that both JET plasmas become unstable to finite-n ideal MHD peeling-ballooning modes at the end of the ELM cycle. During the ELM cycle, infinite-n ideal MHD ballooning modes and kinetic ballooning modes are found to be locally stable in most of the steep pressure gradient region of the pedestal owing to the large bootstrap current, but to be locally unstable in a narrow region of plasma at the extreme edge. Unstable micro-tearing modes are found at the JET pedestal top, but they are sub-dominant to ion temperature gradient modes. They are insensitive to collisionality and stabilised by increasing density gradient.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2013

Microtearing modes at the top of the pedestal

Microtearing modes (MTMs) are unstable in the shallow gradient region just inside the top of the pedestal in the spherical tokamak experiment MAST, and may play an important role in the pedestal evolution. The linear properties of these instabilities are compared with MTMs deeper inside the core, and further detailed investigations expose the basic drive mechanism. MTMs near the MAST pedestal top are not well described by existing theories. In particular the growth rate of the dominant edge MTM does not peak at a finite collision frequency, as frequently reported for MTMs further into the core. Our study suggests that the edge MTM is driven by a collisionless trapped particle mechanism that is sensitive to magnetic drifts. This drive is enhanced in the outer region of MAST by a high magnetic shear and a high trapped particle fraction. Observations of similar modes on conventional aspect ratio devices suggests this drive mechanism may be somewhat ubiquitous towards the edge of current day and future hot tokamaks.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2012

Kinetic instabilities that limit β in the edge of a tokamak plasma: a picture of an H-mode pedestal

Plasma equilibria reconstructed from the Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak (MAST) have sufficient resolution to capture plasma evolution during the short period between edge-localized modes (ELMs). Immediately after the ELM steep gradients in pressure, P, and density, ne, form pedestals close to the separatrix, and they then expand into the core. Local gyrokinetic analysis over the ELM cycle reveals the dominant microinstabilities at perpendicular wavelengths of the order of the ion Larmor radius. These are kinetic ballooning modes (KBMs) in the pedestal and microtearing modes (MTMs) in the core close to the pedestal top. The evolving growth rate spectra, supported by gyrokinetic analysis using artificial local equilibrium scans, suggest a new physical picture for the formation and arrest of this pedestal.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2012

Optimising Performance Through Unbalanced Decompositions

GS2 is an initial value gyrokinetic simulation code developed to study low-frequency turbulence in magnetized plasma. It is parallelised using MPI with the simulation domain decomposed across tasks. The optimal domain decomposition is non-trivial, and complicated by the different requirements of the linear and non-linear parts of the calculations. GS2 users currently choose a data layout, and are guided towards processor count that are efficient for linear calculations. These choices can, however, lead to data decompositions that are relatively inefficient for the non-linear calculations. We have analysed the performance impact of the data decompositions on the non-linear calculation and associated communications. This has helped us to optimise the decomposition algorithm by using unbalanced data layouts for the non-linear calculations whilst maintaining the existing decompositions for the linear calculations, which has completely eliminated communications for parts of the non-linear simulation and improved performance by up to 15% for a representative simulation.

cs.DC↗

arXiv2012

Zero-Turbulence Manifold in a Toroidal Plasma

Sheared toroidal flows can cause bifurcations to zero-turbulent-transport states in tokamak plasmas. The maximum temperature gradients that can be reached are limited by subcritical turbulence driven by the parallel velocity gradient. Here it is shown that q/ε(magnetic field pitch/inverse aspect ratio) is a critical control parameter for sheared tokamak turbulence. By reducing q/ε, far higher temperature gradients can be achieved without triggering turbulence, in some instances comparable to those found experimentally in transport barriers. The zero-turbulence manifold is mapped out, in the zero-magnetic-shear limit, over the parameter space (γ_E, q/ε, R/L_T), where γ_E is the perpendicular flow shear and R/L_T is the normalised inverse temperature gradient scale. The extent to which it can be constructed from linear theory is discussed.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2011

Towards the construction of a model to describe the inter-ELM evolution of the pedestal on MAST

Pedestal profiles that span the ELM cycle have been obtained and used to test the idea that the pedestal pressure gradient in MAST is limited by the onset of Kinetic Ballooning Modes (KBMs). During the inter-ELM period of a regularly type I ELM-ing discharge on MAST, the pressure pedestal height and width increase together while the pressure gradient increases by only 15 % during the ELM cycle. Stability analyses show that the pedestal region over which infinite-n ballooning modes are unstable also broadens during the ELM cycle. To test the relationship between the width of the region that is unstable to n = \infty ideal magnetohydrodynamic ballooning modes and KBMs the gyrokinetic code, GS2, has been used for microstability analysis of the edge plasma region in MAST. The gyrokinetic simulations find that KBM modes with twisting parity are the dominant microinstabilities in the steep pedestal region, with a transition to more slowly growing tearing parity modes in the shallower pressure gradient core region immediately inside the pedestal top. The region over which KBMs are unstable increases during the ELM cycle, and a good correlation is found between the regions unstable to KBMs and infinite-n ideal ballooning modes.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2011

Transport Bifurcation Induced by Sheared Toroidal Flow in Tokamak Plasmas

First-principles numerical simulations are used to describe a transport bifurcation in a differentially rotating tokamak plasma. Such a bifurcation is more probable in a region of zero magnetic shear than one of finite magnetic shear because in the former case the component of the sheared toroidal flow that is perpendicular to the magnetic field has the strongest suppressing effect on the turbulence. In the zero-magnetic-shear regime, there are no growing linear eigenmodes at any finite value of flow shear. However, subcritical turbulence can be sustained, owing to the transient growth of modes driven by the ion temperature gradient (ITG) and the parallel velocity gradient (PVG). Nonetheless, in a parameter space containing a wide range of temperature gradients and velocity shears, there is a sizeable window where all turbulence is suppressed. Combined with the relatively low transport of momentum by collisional (neoclassical) mechanisms, this produces the conditions for a bifurcation from low to high temperature and velocity gradients. The path of this bifurcation is mapped out using interpolation from a large number of simulations. Numerical simulations are also used to construct a parametric model which accurately describes the combined effect of the temperature gradient and the flow gradient over a wide range of their values. Using this parametric model, it is shown that in this reduced-transport state, heat is transported almost neoclassically, while momentum transport is dominated by subcritical PVG turbulence. It is further shown that for any given input of torque, there is an optimum input of heat which maximises the temperature gradient. The parametric model describes both the behaviour of the subcritical turbulence and the complicated effect of the flow shear on the transport stiffness. It may prove useful for transport modelling of tokamaks with sheared flows.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2010

Transport Bifurcation in a Rotating Tokamak Plasma

The effect of flow shear on turbulent transport in tokamaks is studied numerically in the experimentally relevant limit of zero magnetic shear. It is found that the plasma is linearly stable for all non-zero flow shear values, but that subcritical turbulence can be sustained nonlinearly at a wide range of temperature gradients. Flow shear increases the nonlinear temperature gradient threshold for turbulence but also increases the sensitivity of the heat flux to changes in the temperature gradient, except over a small range near the threshold where the sensitivity is decreased. A bifurcation in the equilibrium gradients is found: for a given input of heat, it is possible, by varying the applied torque, to trigger a transition to significantly higher temperature and flow gradients.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2010

Turbulent transport in tokamak plasmas with rotational shear

Nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations have been conducted to investigate turbulent transport in tokamak plasmas with rotational shear. At sufficiently large flow shears, linear instabilities are suppressed, but transiently growing modes drive subcritical turbulence whose amplitude increases with flow shear. This leads to a local minimum in the heat flux, indicating an optimal E x B shear value for plasma confinement. Local maxima in the momentum fluxes are also observed, allowing for the possibility of bifurcations in the E x B shear. The sensitive dependence of heat flux on temperature gradient is relaxed for large flow shear values, with the critical temperature gradient increasing at lower flow shear values. The turbulent Prandtl number is found to be largely independent of temperature and flow gradients, with a value close to unity.

physics.plasm-ph↗