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Three-dimensional modeling of the sawtooth instability in a small tokamak

Phys. Plasmas 14, 056105 (2007); doi:10.1063/1.2695868

Published 12 April 2007

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J. A. Breslau, S. C. Jardin, and W. Park
Plasma Physics Laboratory, SciDAC Center for Extended MHD Modeling (CEMM), Princeton University, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543
The sawtooth instability is one of the most fundamental dynamics of an inductive tokamak discharge such as will occur in ITER [R. Aymar et al., Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 44, 519 (2002)]. Sawtooth behavior is complex and remains incompletely explained. The Center for Extended MHD Modeling (CEMM) SciDAC project has undertaken an ambitious campaign to model this periodic motion in a small tokamak as accurately as possible using the extended MHD model. Both M3D [W. Park et al., Phys. Plasmas 6, 1796 (1999)] and NIMROD [C. R. Sovinec et al., Phys. Plasmas 10, 1727 (2003)] have been applied to this problem. Preliminary nonlinear MHD results show pronounced stochasticity in the magnetic field following the sawtooth crash but are not yet fully converged. Compared to the MHD model, extended MHD predicts plasma rotation, faster reconnection, and reduced field line stochasticity in the crash aftermath. The multiple time and space scales associated with the reconnection layer and growth time make this an extremely challenging computational problem. However, these calculations are providing useful guidelines to the numerical and physical requirements for more rigorous future studies. ©2007 American Institute of Physics
History: Received 4 November 2006; accepted 24 January 2007; published 12 April 2007
Permalink: http://link.aip.org/link/?PHPAEN/14/056105/1
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KEYWORDS and PACS

Keywords
PACS
  • 52.35.Py
    Plasma macroinstabilities (hydromagnetic) e.g., kink, fire-hose, mirror, ballooning, tearing, trapped-particle, flute, Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities, etc
  • 52.55.Fa
    Tokamaks
  • 52.30.Cv
    Plasma magnetohydrodynamics including electron magnetohydrodynamics
  • 52.35.Vd
    Magnetic reconnection in plasmas
  • 52.65.Kj
    Magnetohydrodynamic and fluid equation (plasma simulation)
  • 52.35.Mw
    Nonlinear phenomena: plasma waves, wave propagation and other interactions including parametric effects, mode coupling, ponderomotive effects, etc
  • YEAR: 2007

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PUBLICATION DATA

ISSN:
1070-664X (print)   1089-7674 (online)
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REFERENCES (13)
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