Isotope and plasma size scaling in ion temperature gradient driven turbulence

Idomura, Yasuhiro   

This work presents the impacts of the hydrogen isotope mass and the normalized plasma size on confinement of hydrogen (H) and deuterium (D) plasmas dominated by ion temperature gradient driven turbulence. Numerical experiments of H and D plasmas with ion and electron heating conditions were conducted using the Gyrokinetic Toroidal 5D full- f Eulerian code GT5D. The energy confinement time in the ion heated numerical experiments was almost independent of isotope mass, and the energy confinement was determined mainly by the normalized plasma size or the plasma size divided by the ion gyro radius, indicating an impact of non-local transport. On the other hand, the electron heated numerical experiments showed a clear isotope mass dependency. In addition to the plasma size effect, the isotope mass dependency of the collisional energy transfer from electrons to ions changes the ion heat flux and the turbulence intensity, leading to the degradation of confinement in H plasmas. These results qualitatively agree with the hydrogen isotope scaling in experiments.