Effects of the parallel acceleration on heavy impurity transport in turbulent tokamak plasmas

TL;DR

This paper investigates how parallel stochastic acceleration influences heavy impurity transport in turbulent tokamak plasmas, revealing a coupling that causes a radial pinch effect with potential implications for tokamak operation.

Contribution

It identifies and analyzes the role of parallel stochastic acceleration in heavy impurity transport, a novel mechanism affecting impurity dynamics in tokamak turbulence.

Findings

Parallel acceleration couples with perpendicular transport to create a radial pinch.

The pinch can be inward or outward depending on the acceleration.

Implications for tungsten impurity control in tokamaks and ITER.

Abstract

A process specific to the dynamics of the heavy impurities in turbulent tokamak plasmas is found and analysed. We show that the parallel stochastic acceleration is strongly coupled to the perpendicular transport and generates a radial pinch velocity. The interaction is produced with the hidden drifts, a quasi-coherent component of the motion that consists of a pair of average radial velocities in opposite directions. The parallel acceleration breaks this symmetry and yields a radial average velocity that can be in the inward or outward direction. The transport of the tungsten ions in three-dimensional turbulence is analysed in the frame of a test particle model using numerical simulations. The results show that the acceleration induced pinch can be important for W impurity transport in present days tokamaks and in ITER.