Impact of a hollow density profile on turbulent particle fluxes: Gyrokinetic and fluid simulations

Hollow density profiles may occur in connection with pellet fuelling and L to H transitions. A positive density gradient could potentially stabilize the turbulence or change the relation between convective and diffusive fluxes, thereby reducing the turbulent transport of particles towards the center, making the pellet fuelling scheme inefficient. In the present work, the particle transport driven by Ion Temperature Gradient/Trapped Electron (ITG/TE) mode turbulence in hollow density profiles is studied by fluid as well as gyrokinetic simulations. The fluid model used, an extended version of the Weiland transport model, Extended Drift Wave Model (EDWM), incorporates an arbitrary number of ion species in a multi-fluid description and an extended wavelength spectrum. The fluid model, which is fast and hence suitable for use in predictive simulations, is compared to gyrokinetic simulations using the code GENE. Typical tokamak parameters are used based on the Cyclone Base Case. Parameter scans in key plasma parameters like plasma β, R/LT, and magnetic shear are investigated. In addition, the effects of a fast species are studied and global ITG simulations in a simplified physics description are performed in order to investigate nonlocal effects. It is found that β in particular, has a stabilizing effect in the negative R/Ln region. Both nonlinear GENE and EDWM simulations show a decrease in inward flux for negative R/Ln and a change in the direction from inward to outward for positive R/Ln. Moreover, the addition of fast particles was shown to decrease the inward main ion particle flux in the positive gradient region further. This might have serious consequences for pellet fuelling of high β plasmas. Additionally, the heat flux in global ITG turbulence simulations indicates that nonlocal effects can play a different role from usual in connection with pellet fuelling.