Nonlinear equilibria and transport processes in burning plasmas

Abstract

In this work, we put forward a general phase space transport theory in axisymmetric tokamak plasmas based upon the concept of zonal state (ZS). Within this theoretical framework, the ZS corresponds to a renormalized plasma nonlinear equilibrium consisting of phase space zonal structures (PSZS) and zonal electromagnetic fields (ZFs) which evolve self-consistently with symmetry breaking fluctuations and sources/collisions. More specifically, our approach involves deriving governing equations for the evolution of particle distribution functions (i.e, PSZS), which can be used to compute the corresponding macro-/meso-scale evolving magnetized plasma equilibrium adopting the Chew Goldberger Low description, separating the spatiotemporal microscale structures. The nonlinear physics of ZFs and of geodesic acoustic modes (GAMs)/energetic particle driven GAMs is then analyzed to illustrate the applications of our theory.

Keywords

• burning plasmas
• plasma physics
• nonlinear physics
• kinetic theory
• plasma transport processes