REcent Advances in Nonlinear Gyrokinetics

T.S. Hahm

Princeton University, Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, NJ 08543, USA¸

The nonlinear gyrokinetic formalism[1,2] has provided a firm theoretical foundation for the significant progress in simulating tokamak core turbulence[3] in the past.
On the other hand, the advances in experiments in enhancing confinement and measuring fluctuations have produced results [4,5] which exhibit the limitations of turbulence models which rely heavily on the local stability, and motivate further generalization [6] of the standard gyrokinetic formalism. In this presentation, recent progress in both analytic theory and gyrokinetic simulation, highlighting the importance of conservation laws and nonlocal physics, will be reported.


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References

[1] E.A. Frieman and L. Chen, Phys. Fluids 25, 502 (1982).
[2] T.S. Hahm, Phys. Fluids 31, 2670 (1988).
[3] Z. Lin et al., Science 281, 1835 (1998).
[4] K.H. Burrell, Phys. Plasmas 4, 1499 (1997).
[5] E.J. Synakowski et al., Phys. Plasmas 4, 1736 (1997).
[6] T.S. Hahm, Phys. Plasmas 3, 4658 (1996).
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Based on work in collaboration with Z. Lin (UCI) and P.H. Diamond (UCSD), supported by US DoE Contract No. DE-AC02-76-CHO-3073.