Plasma discharges with a negative triangularity (δ=-0.4) shape have been created in the DIII-D tokamak with a significant normalized beta (β_{N}=2.7) and confinement characteristic of the high ...confinement mode (H_{98y2}=1.2) despite the absence of an edge pressure pedestal and no edge localized modes (ELMs). These inner-wall-limited plasmas have a similar global performance as a positive triangularity (δ=+0.4) ELMing H-mode discharge with the same plasma current, elongation and cross sectional area. For cases both of dominant electron cyclotron heating with T_{e}/T_{i}>1 and dominant neutral beam injection heating with T_{e}/T_{i}=1, turbulent fluctuations over radii 0.5<ρ<0.9 were reduced by 10-50% in the negative triangularity shape compared to the matching positive triangularity shape, depending on the radius and conditions.
We report the first observation of localized modulation of turbulent density fluctuations nover ˜ (via beam emission spectroscopy) by neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) in the core of the DIII-D ...tokamak. NTMs are important as they often lead to severe degradation of plasma confinement and disruptions in high-confinement fusion experiments. Magnetic islands associated with NTMs significantly modify the profiles and turbulence drives. In this experiment nover ˜ was found to be modulated by 14% across the island. Gyrokinetic simulations suggest that nover ˜ could be dominantly driven by the ion temperature gradient instability.
Direct evidence of zonal flow (ZF) predator-prey oscillations and the synergistic roles of ZF- and equilibrium E×B flow shear in triggering the low- to high-confinement (L- to H-mode) transition in ...the DIII-D tokamak is presented. Periodic turbulence suppression is first observed in a narrow layer at and just inside the separatrix when the shearing rate transiently exceeds the turbulence decorrelation rate. The final transition to H mode with sustained turbulence and transport reduction is controlled by equilibrium E×B shear due to the increasing ion pressure gradient.
The alteration of scavenging communities can reduce basic ecosystem services and increase risks to human and wildlife health. Recent work demonstrated that scavenging communities in agricultural ...landscapes are extremely efficient: superabundant mesopredators sequestered system energy by dominating scavenging activity. To explore how the disturbance of these communities affects the stability of carrion removal as an ecosystem function, we experimentally manipulated a scavenging community within an agricultural landscape by reducing the abundance of the dominant scavenger, raccoons Procyon lotor. We then monitored the fates of 676 mouse Mus musculus carcasses placed in 13 control and 13 removal woodlots from June 2007–May 2008. The diversity of vertebrate scavengers did not change between control and removal woodlots and scavenging by invertebrates was unaffected by our experiment. Although Virginia opossums Didelphis virginiana and other scavengers exhibited a functional response when raccoons were reduced in abundance, the increases did not change the proportional allocation of carcasses among scavengers. Finally, the reduced abundance of a major scavenger affected system efficiency. More carcasses remained un-scavenged at the end of trials in removal woodlots than in control woodlots. This experiment demonstrates the vulnerability of a critical ecosystem service, carrion removal, to perturbations of the scavenging community and serves to highlight the method by which scavenger communities may respond to perturbations.
A stochastic magnetic boundary, produced by an applied edge resonant magnetic perturbation, is used to suppress most large edge-localized modes (ELMs) in high confinement (H-mode) plasmas. The ...resulting H mode displays rapid, small oscillations with a bursty character modulated by a coherent 130 Hz envelope. The H mode transport barrier and core confinement are unaffected by the stochastic boundary, despite a threefold drop in the toroidal rotation. These results demonstrate that stochastic boundaries are compatible with H modes and may be attractive for ELM control in next-step fusion tokamaks.
Neoclassical tearing modes have deleterious effects on plasma confinement and, if they grow large enough, they can lead to discharge termination. Therefore, they impose a major barrier in the ...development of operating scenarios of present-day tokamaks. Gyrokinetics offers a path toward studying multi-scale interactions with turbulence and the effect on plasma confinement. As a first step toward this goal, we have implemented static magnetic islands in nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations with the GENE code. We investigate the effect of the islands on profiles, flows, turbulence and transport and the scaling of these effects with respect to island size. We find a clear threshold island width, below which the islands have little or no effect while beyond this point the islands significantly perturb flows, increase turbulence and transport. Additionally, we study the effect of radially asymmetric islands on shear flows for the first time. We find that island induced shear flows can regulate turbulent fluctuation levels in the vicinity of the island separatrices. Throughout this work, we focus on experimentally relevant quantities, such as rms levels of density and electron temperature fluctuations, as well as amplitude and phasing of turbulence modulation. These simulations aim to provide guidelines for interpreting experimental results by comparing qualitative trends in the simulations with those obtained in tokamak experiments.
Multimachine empirical scaling predicts an extremely narrow heat exhaust layer in future high magnetic field tokamaks, producing high power densities that require mitigation. In the experiments ...presented, the width of this exhaust layer is nearly doubled using actuators to increase turbulent transport in the plasma edge. This is achieved in low collisionality, high confinement edge pedestals with their gradients limited by turbulent transport instead of large-scale, coherent instabilities. The exhaust heat flux profile width and divertor leg diffusive spreading both double as a high frequency band of turbulent fluctuations propagating in the electron diamagnetic direction doubles in amplitude. The results are quantitatively reproduced in electromagnetic XGC particle-in-cell simulations which show the heat flux carried by electrons emerges to broaden the heat flux profile, directly supported by Langmuir probe measurements.Multimachine empirical scaling predicts an extremely narrow heat exhaust layer in future high magnetic field tokamaks, producing high power densities that require mitigation. In the experiments presented, the width of this exhaust layer is nearly doubled using actuators to increase turbulent transport in the plasma edge. This is achieved in low collisionality, high confinement edge pedestals with their gradients limited by turbulent transport instead of large-scale, coherent instabilities. The exhaust heat flux profile width and divertor leg diffusive spreading both double as a high frequency band of turbulent fluctuations propagating in the electron diamagnetic direction doubles in amplitude. The results are quantitatively reproduced in electromagnetic XGC particle-in-cell simulations which show the heat flux carried by electrons emerges to broaden the heat flux profile, directly supported by Langmuir probe measurements.
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