Nondiffusive transport of inertial heavy impurities in drift-wave turbulence

TL;DR

This paper studies how inertial heavy impurities like tungsten behave in drift-wave turbulence, revealing a transition to non-diffusive transport that impacts impurity accumulation in fusion devices.

Contribution

It introduces a new turbulence-driven mechanism showing non-diffusive impurity transport due to particle inertia, contrasting with previous tracer-based models.

Findings

Transition to non-diffusive impurity dynamics observed

Inertia significantly influences impurity transport behavior

Implications for impurity control in fusion reactors

Abstract

We investigate the transport behavior of tungsten impurities with finite inertia in drift-wave turbulence using the Hasegawa-Wakatani model. Unlike previous tracer-based models, our simulations reveal a transition to non-diffusive dynamics for a range of charge states. This novel mechanism offers a turbulence-driven route to core impurity accumulation. This finding underscores the nontrivial role of particle inertia in impurity dynamics and has strong implications for impurity control in future fusion devices.