M3D-K simulations of sawteeth and energetic particle transport in tokamak plasmas

Abstract

Nonlinear simulations of sawteeth and related energetic particle transport are carried out using the kinetic/magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) hybrid code M3D-K. MHD simulations show repeated sawtooth cycles for a model tokamak equilibrium. Furthermore, test particle simulations are carried out to study the energetic particle transport due to a sawtooth crash. The results show that energetic particles are redistributed radially in the plasma core, depending on pitch angle and energy. For trapped particles, the redistribution occurs for particle energy below a critical value in agreement with existing theories. For co-passing particles, the redistribution is strong with little dependence on particle energy. In contrast, the redistribution level of counter-passing particles decreases with increasing particle energy.