Threshold Heat-Flux Reduction by Near-Resonant Energy Transfer

Near-resonant energy transfer to large-scale stable modes is shown to reduce transport above the linear critical gradient, contributing to the onset of transport at higher gradients. This is demonstrated for a threshold fluid theory of ion temperature gradient turbulence based on zonal-flow-catalyzed transfer. The heat flux is suppressed above the critical gradient by resonance in the triplet correlation time, a condition enforced by the wave numbers of the interaction of the unstable mode, zonal flow, and stable mode.

Extracting the turbulent flow-field from beam emission spectroscopy images using velocimetry

The 2D turbulent E × B flow-field is inferred from density fluctuation images obtained with the beam emission spectroscopy diagnostic on DIII-D using the orthogonal dynamic programming velocimetry algorithm. A synthetic turbulence model is used to test the algorithm and optimize it for measuring zonal flows. Zonal flow measurements are found to require a signal-to-noise ratio above ∼10 and a zonal flow wavelength longer than ∼2 cm. Comparison between the velocimetry-estimated flow-field and the E × B flow-field using a nonlinear gyrokinetic GENE simulation finds that the flow-fields have identical spatial structure and differ only by the mean turbulence phase velocity, which is spatially uniform in this flux tube simulation.

Nonlinear Electromagnetic Stabilization of Plasma Microturbulence

The physical causes for the strong stabilizing effect of finite plasma β on ion-temperature-gradient-driven turbulence, which far exceeds quasilinear estimates, are identified from nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations. The primary contribution stems from a resonance of frequencies in the dominant nonlinear interaction between the unstable mode, the stable mode, and zonal flows, which maximizes the triplet correlation time and therefore the energy transfer efficiency. A modification to mixing-length transport estimates is constructed, which reproduces nonlinear heat fluxes throughout the examined β range.