Energetic ion transport by microturbulence is insignificant in tokamaks

Pace, D. C.*; Austin, M. E.*; Bass, E. M.*; Budny, R.*; Heidbrink, W. W.*; Hillesheim, J. C.*; Holcomb, C. T.*; Gorelenkova, M.*; Grierson, B. A.*; McCune, D. C.*; et al.

Physics of Plasmas, 20(5), p.056108_1 - 056108_18, 2013/05

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4803930

Energetic ion transport due to microturbulence is investigated in MHD-quiescent plasmas by way of neutral beam injection in the DIII-D tokamak. A range of on-axis and off-axis beam injection scenarios are employed to vary relevant parameters such as the character of the background microturbulence and the value of Eb/Te, where Eb is the energetic ion energy and Te the electron temperature. In all cases it is found that any transport enhancement due to microturbulence is too small to observe experimentally. These transport effects are modeled using numerical and analytic expectations that calculate the energetic ion diffusivity due to microturbulence. It is determined that energetic ion transport due to coherent modes, including possible reductions in neutral beam current drive, is a considerably larger effect and should therefore be considered more important for ITER.