Self-consistent dynamics of impurities in magnetically confined plasmas: turbulence intermittency and nondiffusive transport

Abstract

Self-consistent turbulent transport of high-concentration impurities in magnetically confined fusion plasmas is studied using a three-dimensional nonlinear fluid global turbulence model which includes ion-temperature gradient and trapped electron mode instabilities. It is shown that the impurity concentration can have a dramatic feedback in the turbulence and, as a result, it can significantly change the transport properties of the plasma. High concentration impurities can trigger strong intermittency that manifests in non-Gaussian heavy tails of the probability density functions of the E × B fluctuations and of the ion-temperature flux fluctuations. At the heart of this self-consistent coupling is the existence of inward propagating ion-temperature fronts with a sharp gradient at the leading edge that give rise to instabilities and avalanchelike bursty transport. Numerical evidence of time nonlocality (i.e., history dependence) in the delayed response of the flux to the gradient is presented.