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Updated: Jun 3, 2026

Magnetically Induced Rotating Rayleigh-Taylor Instability
Published on: March 3, 2017
Trapped electron mode turbulence driven intrinsic rotation in Tokamak plasmas
1Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton University, P.O. Box 451, Princeton, New Jersey 08543, USA. wwang@pppl.gov
Abstract:
Progress from global gyrokinetic simulations in understanding the origin of intrinsic rotation in toroidal plasmas is reported. The turbulence-driven intrinsic torque associated with nonlinear residual stress generation due to zonal flow shear induced asymmetry in the parallel wave number spectrum is shown to scale close to linearly with plasma gradients and the inverse of the plasma current, qualitatively reproducing experimental empirical scalings of intrinsic rotation. The origin of current scaling is found to be enhanced k(∥) symmetry breaking induced by the increased radial variation of the safety factor as the current decreases. The intrinsic torque is proportional to the pressure gradient because both turbulence intensity and zonal flow shear, which are two key ingredients for driving residual stress, increase with turbulence drive, which is R/L(T(e)) and R/L(n(e)) for the trapped electron mode.
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