Isotope and plasma size scaling in ion temperature gradient driven turbulence

Idomura, Yasuhiro

Physics of Plasmas, 26(12), p.120703_1 - 120703_5, 2019/12

https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5133084

This Letter presents the impacts of the hydrogen isotope mass and the normalized gyroradius on L-mode like hydrogen (H) and deuterium (D) plasmas dominated by ion temperature gradient driven (ITG) turbulence using global full-f gyrokinetic simulations. In ion heated numerical experiments with adiabatic electrons, the energy confinement time shows almost no isotope mass dependency, and is determined by Bohm like scaling. Electron heated numerical experiments with kinetic electrons show clear isotope mass dependency caused by the isotope effect on the collisional energy transfer from electrons to ions, and the H and D plasmas show similar ion and electron temperature profiles at an H to D heating power ratio of . The normalized collisionless ion gyrokinetic equations for H and D plasmas become identical at the same , and collisions weakly affect ITG turbulence. Therefore, the isotope mass dependency is mainly contributed by the scaling and the heating sources.