Abstract. The theory of turbulent transport of toroidal momentum is discussed in the context of the phenomenon of spontaneous/intrinsic rotation. We review the basic phenomenology and survey the fundamental theoretical concepts. We then proceed to an in-depth discussion of the radial flux of toroidal momentum, with special emphasis on the off-diagonal elements, namely the residual stress (the portion independent of V) and the pinch. A simple model is developed which unifies these effects in a single framework and which recovers many of the features of the Rice scaling trends for intrinsic rotation. We also discuss extensions to finite beta and the effect of SOL boundary conditions. Several issues for future consideration are identified.
Mechanisms through which plasma microturbulence can drive a mean electron plasma current are derived. The efficiency through which these turbulent contributions can drive deviations from neoclassical predictions of the electron current profile is computed by employing a linearized Coulomb collision operator. It is found that a non-diffusive contribution to the electron momentum flux as well as an anomalous electron-ion momentum exchange term provide the most efficient means through which turbulence can modify the mean electron current for the cases considered. Such turbulent contributions appear as an effective EMF within Ohm's law and hence provide an ideal means for driving deviations from neoclassical predictions.
The avalanche of runaway electrons is thought to pose a significant obstacle to the success of reactor scale devices such as ITER. As a result, a significant effort has been devoted toward quantifying both the threshold for the initiation of the avalanche of runaway electrons and the efficiency of the avalanche mechanism. In this work, these two quantities are computed utilizing a guiding-center formulation with large-angle collision operators of varying physics fidelity. The use of a guiding-center formulation, while computationally more costly compared to bounceaveraged approaches, provides a conceptually straightforward means of incorporating tokamak geometry. It is found that while the avalanche threshold is only weakly impacted by toroidal geometry for fully ionized low-Z plasmas, it can be significantly impacted if high-Z impurities are present. Furthermore, it is shown that the efficiency of the avalanche mechanism depends sensitively on the impurity content, the charge state of the underlying impurities, and the radial profile of the seed electron population. Finally, the commonly employed Møller secondary source term used to model the generation of secondary electrons is shown to yield avalanche growth rates and thresholds in good agreement with a more complete conservative large-angle collision operator.
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