arXiv subjects

Z. W. Ma

Publications and source records attributed to Z. W. Ma.

9 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Stabilization and Re-excitation of Sawtooth Oscillations due to Energetic Particles in Tokamaks

Sawtooth oscillations, driven by internal kink modes (IKMs), are fundamental phenomena in tokamak plasmas. They can be classified into different types, including normal sawteeth, small sawteeth, and in some cases, evolving into the steady-island state, each having a different impact on energy confinement in fusion reactors. This study investigates the interaction between sawtooth oscillations and energetic particles (EPs) using the initial-value MHD-kinetic hybrid code CLT-K, which can perform long-term self-consistent nonlinear simulations. We analyze the redistribution of EPs caused by sawtooth crashes and the effect of EPs on sawtooth behavior and type transitions. The results show that co-passing EPs tend to re-excite sawtooth oscillations, extending their period, while counter-passing EPs promote the system evolution toward small sawteeth, potentially leading to the steady-island state. Additionally, we provide a physical picture of how EPs influence sawtooth type through the mechanism of magnetic flux pumping. We demonstrate that the radial residual flow in the core plays a crucial role in determining the reconnection rate and sawtooth type. Moreover, we observe new phenomena about couplings of various instabilities, such as the excitation of global multi-mode toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) due to EP redistribution following a sawtooth crash and the excitation of the resonant tearing mode (r-TM) when injecting counter-passing EPs. The study also explores the impact of EP energy and the safety factor profile on the development of stochastic magnetic fields and EP transport. These findings emphasize the necessity of multi-mode simulations in capturing the complexity of EP-sawtooth interactions and provide insights for optimizing sawtooth control in future reactors such as ITER.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2025

Effective resistivity for magnetohydrodynamic simulation of collisionless magnetic reconnection

The electron inertia term and the off-diagonal electron pressure terms are well-known for the frozen-in condition breakdown in collisionless magnetic reconnection, which are naturally kinetic and difficult to be employed in magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) simulations. After considering the shortcomings of MHD and Hall MHD in neglecting the important electron dynamics such as the inertia and the nongyrotropic pressure, the kinetic characteristics of electrons and ions in the diffusion region are studied and an effective resistivity model involving dynamics of charged particles is proposed [Z. W. Ma et al. 2018 Sci. Rep. 8 10521]. The amplitude of the effective resistivity is mainly determined by electrons in most realistic situations with large ion-electron mass ratios. In this work, the effective resistivity model for collisionless magnetic reconnection without the guide field is successfully applied in the 2.5D MHD and Hall MHD simulations, which remarkably improves the simulation results compared with traditional MHD models. For the MHD case, the effective resistivity significantly increased the reconnection rate to the reasonable value of ~0.1$B_0v_A$. For the Hall MHD case with effective resistivity, the peak reconnection rate is ~0.25$B_0v_A$, and the major structures of the reconnecting field and the current sheet agree well with the particle-in-cell (PIC) and hybrid simulations.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2024

Influences of $δ$B Contribution and Parallel Inertial Term of Energetic Particles on MHD-Kinetic Hybrid Simulations: A Case Study of the 1/1 Internal Kink Mode

The magnetohydrodynamic-kinetic (MHD-kinetic) hybrid model [Park et. al., 1992] has been widely applied in studying energetic particles (EPs) problems in fusion plasmas for past decades. The pressure-coupling scheme or the current-coupling scheme is adopted in this model. However, two noteworthy issues arise in the model application: firstly, the coupled term introduced in the pressure-coupling scheme, $\left( \nabla \cdot \mathbf{P}_{\mathrm{h}} \right)_{\bot}$, is often simplified by $\nabla \cdot \mathbf{P}_{\mathrm{h}}$, which is equivalent to neglecting the parallel inertial term of EPs; secondly, besides the $δf $ contribution caused by changing in the EP distribution function, the magnetic field perturbation (the $δ\mathbf{B} $ contribution) generated during development of the instabilities should also be considered, but it is often ignored in existing hybrid simulations. In this paper, we derive the analytical formulations under these two coupling schemes and then numerically study the representative case of the linear stability of the m/n=1/1 internal kink mode (IKM) [Fu et. al., 2006] by using the CLT-K code. It is found that the approximated models can still yield reasonable results when EPs are isotopically distributed. But it fails completely in cases with anisotropic EP distributions. In addition, we further investigate the influence of EP's orbit width on the stability of IKM and verify the equivalence between pressure-coupling scheme and the current-coupling scheme.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2020

Evolution of safety factor profiles in sawteeth

Two different definitions of the safety factor are applied to investigate the evolution of the safety factor profile during normal sawteeth, the stationary state, and the incomplete reconnection. It is found that the safety factor profiles from the old definition are sometimes inconsistent with the Poincare plots of the magnetic field during sawteeth. The old safety factor always indicates that the safety factor around the magnetic axis is flattened and equal to 1.0 with the development of the kink instability. However, the Poincare plots of the magnetic field lines indicate that the topology of the magnetic field around the magnetic axis has not been changed. To solve the inconsistency, we propose a new definition of the safety factor, in which the poloidal angle relative to the new twisted magnetic axis is used instead of the poloidal angle to the original axis. With the new definition, the safety factor profiles are consistent with Poincare plots of the magnetic field. We also find that the safety factor profiles are significantly different from the two different q definitions. With the new q definition, the safety factor at the magnetic axis q0 remains unchanged in almost the entire period of a sawtooth and jumps up to 1.0 near the end during normal sawteeth; in the non-axisymmetric equilibrium, q0 is still far below 1.0; q0 remains its initial value throughout the incomplete reconnection.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2019

Acceleration of three-dimensional Tokamak magnetohydrodynamical code with graphics processing unit and OpenACC heterogeneous parallel programming

In this paper, the OpenACC heterogeneous parallel programming model is successfully applied to modification and acceleration of the three-dimensional Tokamak magnetohydrodynamical code (CLTx). Through combination of OpenACC and MPI technologies, CLTx is further parallelized by using multiple-GPUs. Significant speedup ratios are achieved on NVIDIA TITAN Xp and TITAN V GPUs, respectively, with very few modifications of CLTx. Furthermore, the validity of the double precision calculations on the above-mentioned two graphics cards has also been strictly verified with m/n=2/1 resistive tearing mode instability in Tokamak.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2015

Energy of Alfven waves generated during magnetic reconnection

A new method for the determination of the Alfven wave energy generated during magnetic reconnection is introduced and used to analyze the results from two-dimensional MHD simulations. It is found that the regions with strong Alfven wave perturbations almost coincide with that where both magnetic-field lines and flow-stream lines are bent, suggesting that this method is reliable for identifying Alfven waves. The magnetic energy during magnetic reconnection is mainly transformed into the thermal energy. The conversion rate to Alfven wave energy from the magnetic energy is strongly correlated to the magnetic reconnection rate. The maximum conversion rate at the time with the peak reconnection rate is found to be only about 4% for the cases with the plasma beta=0.01,0.1, and 1.0.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2011

Generalizations of a Nonlinear Fluid Model for Void Formation in Dusty Plasmas

New developments in the theory and numerical simulation of a recently proposed one-dimensional nonlinear time-dependent fluid model [K. Avinash, A. Bhattacharjee, and S. Hu, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 075001 (2003)] for void formation in dusty plasmas are presented. The model describes an initial instability caused by the ion drag, rapid nonlinear growth, and a nonlinear saturation mechanism that realizes a quasi-steady state containing a void. The earlier one-dimensional model has been extended to two and three dimensions (the latter, assuming spherical symmetry), using a more complete set of dynamical equations than was used in the earlier one-dimensional formulation. The present set of equations includes an ion continuity equation and a nonlinear ion drag operator. Qualitative features of void formation are shown to be robust with respect to different functional forms of the ion drag operator.

physics.comp-ph↗

arXiv2007

Satellite Observations of Separator Line Geometry of Three-Dimensional Magnetic Reconnection

Detection of a separator line that connects magnetic nulls and the determination of the dynamics and plasma environment of such a structure can improve our understanding of the three-dimensional (3D) magnetic reconnection process. However, this type of field and particle configuration has not been directly observed in space plasmas. Here we report the identification of a pair of nulls, the null-null line that connects them, and associated fans and spines in the magnetotail of Earth using data from the four Cluster spacecraft. With di and de designating the ion and electron inertial lengths, respectively, the separation between the nulls is found to be ~0.7di and an associated oscillation is identified as a lower hybrid wave with wavelength ~ de. This in situ evidence of the full 3D reconnection geometry and associated dynamics provides an important step toward to establishing an observational framework of 3D reconnection.

physics.plasm-ph↗

arXiv2007

In situ evidence for the structure of the magnetic null in a 3D reconnection event in the Earth's magnetotail

Magnetic reconnection is one of the most important processes in astrophysical, space and laboratory plasmas. Identifying the structure around the point at which the magnetic field lines break and subsequently reform, known as the magnetic null point, is crucial to improving our understanding reconnection. But owing to the inherently three-dimensional nature of this process, magnetic nulls are only detectable through measurements obtained simultaneously from at least four points in space. Using data collected by the four spacecraft of the Cluster constellation as they traversed a diffusion region in the Earth's magnetotail on 15 September, 2001, we report here the first in situ evidence for the structure of an isolated magnetic null. The results indicate that it has a positive-spiral structure whose spatial extent is of the same order as the local ion inertial length scale, suggesting that the Hall effect could play an important role in 3D reconnection dynamics.

physics.plasm-ph↗