Related papers: Optimisation of Gyrokinetic Microstability Using A…
Nonlinear electromagnetic stabilization by suprathermal pressure gradients found in specific regimes is shown to be a key factor in reducing tokamak microturbulence, augmenting significantly the thermal pressure electromagnetic…
Using the averaged magnetic drift model and a first-order finite Larmor radius (FLR) expansion, the eigenvalue equation for the ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode in tokamak plasmas is reduced to a Schr\"odinger-type differential equation.…
Recent work demonstrated that breaking the up-down symmetry of tokamak flux surfaces removes a constraint that limits intrinsic momentum transport, and hence toroidal rotation, to be small. We show, through MHD analysis, that ellipticity is…
Turbulence driven by small scale instabilities causes large heat and particle transport and is a major limiting factor of current fusion devices. Above a critical value, the ion temperature gradient leads to the growth of a microinstability…
Magnetic islands play a crucial role in regulating plasma confinement in tokamaks by interacting with micro-instabilities, such as the ion temperature gradient (ITG) mode. This work presents a detailed investigation of the effects of static…
We present a symplectic electromagnetic fully-kinetic particle-in-cell simulation of microinstabilities in plasma, using parameters from the Cyclone Base Case [Dimits, et al., Physics of Plasmas 7, 969 (2000)]. The results show that the…
Based on the analysis of a large number of high-fidelity nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations, we propose a novel strategy to improve confinement in spherical tokamak plasmas by combining up-down asymmetric flux surface shaping with the Low…
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…
Curvature-driven instabilities are ubiquitous in magnetised fusion plasmas. By analysing the conservation laws of the gyrokinetic system of equations, we demonstrate that the well-known spatial localisation of these instabilities to regions…
Gyrokinetic simulations are utilized to study effects of magnetic islands on the ion temperature gradient (ITG) turbulence in the KSTAR tokamak with resonant magnetic perturbations. Simulations show that the transport is controlled by the…
We have investigated linear and nonlinear dynamics of ion-temperature-gradient driven drift mode for Maxwellian and non Maxwellian pair-ion plasma embedded in an inhomogeneous magnetic field having gradients in ion's temperature and number…
Spherical tokamaks (STs) have many desirable features that make them a suitable choice for fusion power plants. To understand their confinement properties, accurate calculation of turbulent micro-instabilities is necessary for tokamak…
Differential rotation is induced in tokamak plasmas when an underlying symmetry of the governing gyrokinetic-Maxwell system of equations is broken. One such symmetry-breaking mechanism is considered here: the turbulent acceleration of…
In magnetic confinement fusion devices, the ratio of the plasma pressure to the magnetic field energy, $\beta$, can become sufficiently large that electromagnetic microinstabilities become unstable, driving turbulence that distorts or…
We have extended our study of the competition between the drive and stabilization of plasma microinstabilities by sheared flow to include electromagnetic effects at low plasma $\beta$ (the ratio of plasma to magnetic pressure). The extended…
This work reports on the development and numerical implementation of the linear electromagnetic gyrokinetic (GK) model in a tokamak flux-tube geometry using a moment approach based on the expansion of the perturbed distribution function on…
In this paper the global mode structures of linear ion-temperature-gradient (ITG) modes in tokamak plasmas are obtained by combining results from the local gyrokinetic code GS2 with analytical theory. Local gyrokinetic calculations, using…
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…
In the context of global gyrokinetic simulations of turbulence using a Particle-In-Cell framework, verifying the delta-f assumption with a fixed background distribution becomes challenging when determining quasi-steady state profiles…
Boundary plasma physics plays an important role in tokamak confinement, but is difficult to simulate in a gyrokinetic code due to the scale-inseparable nonlocal multi-physics in magnetic separatrix and open magnetic field geometry. Neutral…