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In this Letter, the influence of the "Coriolis drift" on small scale instabilities in toroidal plasmas is shown to generate a toroidal momentum pinch velocity. Such a pinch results because the Coriolis drift generates a coupling between the density and temperature perturbations on the one hand and the perturbed parallel flow velocity on the other. A simple fluid model is used to highlight the physics mechanism and gyro-kinetic calculations are performed to accurately assess the magnitude of the pinch. The derived pinch velocity leads to a radial gradient of the toroidal velocity profile even in the absence of a torque on the plasma and is predicted to generate a peaking of the toroidal velocity profile similar to the peaking of the density profile. Finally, the pinch also affects the interpretation of current experiments.

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Experiments were carried out in the JET tokamak to determine the critical ion temperature inverse gradient length (R/LTi=R|nablaTi|/Ti) for the onset of ion temperature gradient modes and the stiffness of Ti profiles with respect to deviations from the critical value. Threshold and stiffness have been compared with linear and nonlinear predictions of the gyrokinetic code GS2. Plasmas with higher values of toroidal rotation show a significant increase in R/LTi, which is found to be mainly due to a decrease of the stiffness level. This finding has implications on the extrapolation to future machines of present day results on the role of rotation on confinement.

The physical processes producing electron particle transport in the core of tokamak plasmas are described. Starting from the gyrokinetic equation, a simple analytical derivation is used as guidance to illustrate the main mechanisms driving turbulent particle convection. A review of the experimental observations on particle transport in tokamaks is presented and the consistency with the theoretical predictions is discussed.An overall qualitative agreement, and in some cases even a specific quantitative agreement, emerges between complex theoretical predictions and equally complex experimental observations, exhibiting different dependences on plasma parameters under different regimes. By these results, the direct connection between macroscopic transport properties and the character of microscopic turbulence is pointed out, and an important confirmation of the paradigm of microinstabilities and turbulence as the main cause of transport in the core of tokamaks is obtained. Finally, the impact of these results on the prediction of the peaking of the electron density profile in a fusion reactor is illustrated.