Published January 2011 | Version v1
Journal article

Effects of the radial electric field in a quasisymmetric stellarator

  • 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Plasma Science and Fusion Center, 167 Albany St, Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States)

Description

Recent calculations have shown that a radial electric field can significantly alter the neoclassical ion heat flux, ion flow, bootstrap current and residual zonal flow in a tokamak, even when the E x B drift is much smaller than the ion thermal speed. Here we show the novel analytical methods used in these calculations can be adapted to a quasisymmetric stellarator. The methods are based on using the conserved helical momentum ψ* instead of the poloidal or toroidal flux as a radial coordinate in the kinetic equation. The banana-regime calculations also employ a model collision operator that keeps only the velocity-space derivatives normal to the trapped-passing boundary, even as this boundary is shifted and deformed by the E x B drift. We prove the isomorphism between quasisymmetric stellarators and tokamaks extends to the finite-E x B generalizations of both banana-regime and plateau-regime neoclassical theory and the residual zonal flow. The plateau-regime results may be relevant to the HSX stellarator, and both the plateau- and banana-regime results can be used to validate stellarator transport codes.

Availability note (English)

Available from http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/0741-3335/53/1/015004

Additional details

Identifiers

DOI
10.1088/0741-3335/53/1/015004;
PII
S0741-3335(11)62432-9;

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Plasma Physics and Controlled Fusion
Journal Volume
53
Journal Issue
1
Journal Page Range
[28 p.]
ISSN
0741-3335
CODEN
PPCFET