Related papers: Energetic bounds on gyrokinetic instabilities. Par…
A family of rigorous upper bounds on the growth rate of local gyrokinetic instabilities in magnetized plasmas is derived from the evolution equation for the Helmholtz free energy. These bounds hold for both electrostatic and electromagnetic…
Free energy, widely used as a measure of turbulence intensity in weakly collisional plasmas, has been recently found to be a suitable basis to describe both linear and nonlinear growth in a wide class gyrokinetic systems. The simplicity…
We introduce modes of instantaneous optimal growth of free energy for the fully electromagnetic gyrokinetic equations. We demonstrate how these "optimal modes" arise naturally from the free energy balance equation, allowing its convenient…
The free energy balance equation for gyrokinetic fluctuations is derived and applied to instabilities. An additional term due to electromagnetic sources is included. This can provide a simpler way to compute the free energy balance in…
Bounding energetic growth of gyrokinetic instabilities is a complementary approach to linear instability analyses involving normal eigenmodes. Previous work has focused on upper bounds which are valid linearly and nonlinearly. However, if…
For a magnetised plasma in a straight magnetic guide field, we derive a set of four-dimensional kinetic equations, which can capture electromagnetic turbulence in the drift kinetic limit. To do so, we start from the gyrokinetic equations,…
The linear gyrokinetic stability properties of magnetically confined electron-positron plasmas are investigated in the parameter regime most likely to be relevant for the first laboratory experiments involving such plasmas, where the…
Upper bounds on the growth of instabilities in gyrokinetic systems have recently been derived by considering the optimal perturbations that maximise the growth of a chosen energy norm. This technique has previously been applied to…
The quasilinear particle flux arising from gyrokinetic instabilities is calculated in the electrostatic and collisionless approximation, keeping the geometry of the magnetic field arbitrary. In particular, the flux of electrons and heavy…
A gyrokinetic theory is developed under a set of orderings applicable to the edge region of tokamaks and other magnetic confinement devices, as well as to internal transport barriers. The result is a practical set equations that is valid…
We derive a gyrokinetic formalism which is very generally valid: the ordering allows both large inhomogeneities in plasma flow and magnetic field at long wavelength, like typical drift-kinetic theories, as well as fluctuations at the…
A set of equations is derived describing the macroscopic transport of particles and energy in a thermonuclear plasma on the energy confinement time. The equations thus derived allow studying collisional and turbulent transport…
Predicting the dynamics of a thermonuclear plasma during a magnetic confinement experiment is fundamental in order to make nuclear fusion a reliable source of energy. The development of a set of equations describing the plasma evolution on…
Magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence is encountered in a wide variety of astrophysical plasmas, including accretion disks, the solar wind, and the interstellar and intracluster medium. On small scales, this turbulence is often expected to…
The magnetic field structure associated with edge localised ideal ballooning mode (ELM) bursts is analysed by nonlinear gyrofluid computation. The linear growth phase is characterised by the formation of small scale magnetic islands.…
A set of flux tube gyrokinetic equations that includes the effect of the spatial variation of the density, temperature and rotation gradients on the turbulence is derived. This new set of equations uses periodic boundary conditions. In the…
Gyrokinetics is a rich and rewarding playground to study some of the mysteries of modern physics. In this thesis I present work, motivated by the quest for fusion energy, which seeks to uncover some of the inner workings of turbulence in…
This paper presents a complete theoretical framework for plasma turbulence and transport in tokamak plasmas. The fundamental scale separations present in plasma turbulence are codified as an asymptotic expansion in the ratio of the…
We discuss and compare several geometric structures which imply an upper bound to the acceleration of a particle measured in its rest system. While all of them have the same implications on the motion of a point particle, they differ in…
The linear and nonlinear evolution of magnetic reconnection in collisionless high-temperature plasmas with a strong guide field is analyzed on the basis of a two-dimensional gyrofluid model. The linear growth rate of the reconnecting…