Gyrokinetic Simulation of TAE in Fusion plasmas

Linear gyrokinetic simulation of fusion plasmas finds a radial localization of the toroidal Alfv'en eigenmodes (TAE) due to the non-perturbative energetic particles (EP) contribution. The EP-driven TAE has a radial mode width much smaller than that predicted by the magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) theory. The TAE radial position stays around the strongest EP pressure gradients when the EP profile evolves. The non-perturbative EP contribution is also the main cause for the breaking of the radial symmetry of the ballooning mode structure and for the dependence of the TAE frequency on the toroidal mode number. These phenomena are beyond the picture of the conventional MHD theory.;Linear gyrokinetic simulation of the electron cyclotron heating (ECH) experiments on DIII-D successfully recover the TAE and RSAE. The EP profile, rather than the electron temperature, is found to be the key factor determining whether TAE or RSAE is the dominant mode in the system in our simulation.;Investigation on the nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation model reveals a missing nonlinear term which has important contributions to the zonal magnetic fields. A new fluid-electron hybrid model is proposed to keep this nonlinear term in the lowest order fluid part. Nonlinear simulation of TAE using DIII-D parameters confirms the importance of this new term for the zonal magnetic fields. It is also found that zonal structures dominated by zonal electric fields are forced driven at about twice the linear growth rate of TAE in the linear phase. The zonal flows then limit the nonlinear saturation level by tearing the eigenmode structures apart. In the nonlinear phase of the simulation, the major frequency in the system chirps down by about 30% and stays there.