First principles based simulations of instabilities and turbulence

Villard, L.*; Angelino, P.*; Bottino, A.*; Allfrey, S. J.*; Hatzky, R.*; Idomura, Yasuhiro; Sauter, O.*; Tran, T. M.*

Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion, 46(12B), p.B51 - B62, 2004/12

https://doi.org/10.1088/0741-3335/46/12B/005

This paper reviews the present status of recent first principles based plasma turbulence simulations, and gives quantitative discussions on influences of the v// nonlinearlity and the geometry effects in the gyrokinetic Poisson equaiton, which are ignored in the conventional approximations, on simulations results. Careful treatments of these effects enable turbulence simulations satisfying the conservation of the energy and the particle number. The new simulation disclosed new phenomena, and it is found that (1) turbulence spreading is induced by avalanche like phnemena consisting of bursty heat transport and local flattening of pressure profiles, and (2) nonlinearly driven EB flows become global shear flows with scale lengths of about 30 ion gyro radii.