Hyperdiffusion of dust particles in a turbulent tokamak plasma

Nespoli, Federico ; Kaganovich, Igor ; Autricque, Adrien; Marandet, Yannick; Tamain, Patrick
Issue date: 2021
Rights:
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY)
Cite as:
Nespoli, Federico, Kaganovich, Igor, Autricque, Adrien, Marandet, Yannick, & Tamain, Patrick. (2021). Hyperdiffusion of dust particles in a turbulent tokamak plasma [Data set]. Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University. https://doi.org/10.11578/1814957
@electronic{nespoli_federico_2021,
  author      = {Nespoli, Federico and
                Kaganovich, Igor and
                Autricque, Adrien and
                Marandet, Yannick and
                Tamain, Patrick},
  title       = {{Hyperdiffusion of dust particles in a tu
                rbulent tokamak plasma}},
  publisher   = {{Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Pri
                nceton University}},
  year        = 2021,
  url         = {https://doi.org/10.11578/1814957}
}
Description:

The effect of plasma turbulence on the trajectories of dust particles is investigated for the first time. The dynamics of dust particles is computed using the ad-hoc developed Dust Injection Simulator code, using a 3D turbulent plasma background computed with the TOKAM3X code. As a result, the evolution of the particle trajectories is governed by the ion drag force, and the shape of the trajectory is set by the Stokes number $St\propto a_d/n_0$, with $a_d$ the dust radius and $n_0$ the density at the separatrix. The plasma turbulence is observed to scatter the dust particles, exhibiting a hyperdiffusive regime in all cases. The amplitude of the turbulent spread of the trajectories $\Delta r^2$ is shown to depend on the ratio $Ku/St$, with $Ku\propto u_{rms}$ the Kubo number and $u_{rms}$ the fluctuation level of the plasma flow. These results are compared with a simple analytical model, predicting $\Delta r^2\propto (Ku/St)^2t^3$, or $\Delta r^2\propto (u_{rms}n_0/a_d)^2t^3$. As the dust is heated by the plasma fluxes, thermionic emission sets the dust charge, originally negative, to slightly positive values. This results in a substantial reduction of the ion drag force through the suppression of its Coulomb scattering component. The dust grain inertia is then no longer negligible, and drives the transition from a hyperdiffusive regime towards a ballistic one. This work is supported by the U.S. Department Of Energy under Contract No. DE-AC02-09CH11466 with Princeton University, and was granted access to the HPC resources of CINES, under the allocations A00505066912 and A00705066912 made by GENCI.

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