Turbulent impurity transport simulations in Wendelstein 7-X plasmas

TL;DR

This study uses gyrokinetic simulations to analyze turbulent impurity transport in Wendelstein 7-X plasmas, revealing that diffusion dominates impurity flux and that turbulence types influence impurity movement.

Contribution

First comprehensive nonlinear gyrokinetic simulation analysis of impurity transport in W7-X, comparing trace and realistic impurity concentrations.

Findings

Turbulent impurity transport is mainly diffusive.

Thermo-diffusion causes weak inward flux.

ITG and TEM turbulence influence impurity direction.

Abstract

A study of turbulent impurity transport by means of quasilinear and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations is presented for Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X). The calculations have been carried out with the recently developed gyrokinetic code stella. Different impurity species are considered in the presence of various types of background instabilities: ITG, TEM and ETG modes for the quasilinear part of the work; ITG and TEM for the nonlinear results. While the quasilinear approach allows one to draw qualitative conclusions about the sign or relative importance of the various contributions to the flux, the nonlinear simulations quantitatively determine the size of the turbulent flux and check the extent to which the quasilinear conclusions hold. Although the bulk of the nonlinear simulations are performed at trace impurity concentration, nonlinear simulations are also carried out at realistic effective charge values, in order to know to what degree the conclusions based on the simulations performed for trace impurities can be extrapolated to realistic impurity concentrations. The presented results conclude that the turbulent radial impurity transport in W7-X is mainly dominated by ordinary diffusion, which is close to that measured during the recent W7-X experimental campaigns. It is also confirmed that thermo-diffusion adds a weak inward flux contribution and that, in the absence of impurity temperature and density gradients, ITG- and TEM-driven turbulence push the impurities inwards and outwards, respectively.