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Author: Istvan Pusztai
Requested Type: Pre-Selected Invited
Submitted: 2016-02-15 03:35:59

Co-authors: G.J.Wilkie, Ye.O.Kazakov, T.Fulop

Contact Info:
Chalmers University of Technology
Fysikgarden 1
Gothenburg,   41296
Sweden

Abstract Text:
The success of magnetic confinement fusion strongly depends on the radial transport of alpha particles from the birth energy down to the thermalized ash. At some suprathermal energy range turbulence can play a major role in radially transporting alpha particles [1]. Highly energetic minorities, which can be produced in the three ion minority (TIM) ion cyclotron resonance heating scheme [2], have been proposed for experimental studies of fast ion physics without the generation of fusion alphas. We present a gyrokinetic study of the turbulent transport of TIM heated minorities (specifically, He3 in a H-He4 plasma) characterized by a non-Maxwellian energy distribution with an MeV-range effective temperature, and we make a comparison to the transport of fusion born alpha particles. Our results indicate that although the turbulent transport coefficients are similar, differences in their distribution functions - ultimately their generation processes - can make the resulting turbulent fluxes different. Alphas has to be transported outwards in steady state, while turbulence acts to accumulate the heated minorities in the region where the power absorption is the largest.
[1] G. J. Wilkie et al. (2015) J. Plasma Phys. 81, 905810306.
[2] Ye. O. Kazakov et al. (2015) Nucl. Fusion 55, 032001.

Comments:
Topic: Plasma Properties, Equilibrium, Stability, and Transport