https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/e2011-10344-9
Losses and nonlinear steady-state particle distribution functions for fully ionized tokamak-plasmas in the collisional transport regimes
Université Libre de Bruxelles (U.L.B.), Blvd. du Triomphe, Campus de la Plaine, C.P. 231, Building NO, 1050 Bruxelles, Belgium
a e-mail: gsonnino@ulb.ac.be
Received:
9
June
2010
Received in final form:
8
November
2010
Published online:
18
March
2011
Fully ionized L-mode tokamak plasmas in the fully collisional (Pfirsch-Schlüter) and in the low-collisional (banana) nonlinear transport regimes are analyzed. We derive the expressions for particles and heat losses together with the steady-state particle distribution functions in the several collisional transport regimes. The validity of the nonlinear closure equations, previously derived, has been indirectly tested by checking that the obtained particle distribution functions are indeed solutions of the nonlinear, steady-state, Vlasov-Landau gyro-kinetic equations. A quite encouraging result is the fact that, for L-mode tokamak plasmas a dissymmetry appears between the ion and electron transport coefficients: the latter submits to a nonlinear correction, which makes the radial electron coefficients much larger than the former. In particular we show that when the L-mode JET plasma is out of the linear region, the Pfirsch-Schlüter electron transport coefficients are corrected by an amplification factor, which may reach values of order 102. Such a correction is absent for ions. On the contrary, in the banana regime, the ion transport coefficients are increased by a factor 2 and the nonlinear corrections for electrons are negligible. These results are in line with experiments.
© EDP Sciences, Società Italiana di Fisica and Springer-Verlag 2011