Intrinsic toroidal rotation driven by turbulent and neoclassical processes in tokamak plasmas from global gyrokinetic simulations

Authors:
  • HZHongxuan Zhu
    Hongxuan Zhu
  • TST. Stoltzfus-Dueck
    T. Stoltzfus-Dueck
  • RHR. Hager
    R. Hager
  • SKS. Ku
    S. Ku
  • CCC. S. Chang
    C. S. Chang

Abstract
Gyrokinetic tokamak plasmas can exhibit intrinsic toroidal rotation driven by the residual stress. While most studies have attributed the residual stress to the parallel-momentum flux from the turbulent $\boldsymbol{E}\times\boldsymbol{B}$ motion, the parallel-momentum flux from the drift-orbit motion (denoted $Π_\parallel^D$) and the $\boldsymbol{E}\times\boldsymbol{B}$-momentum flux from the $\boldsymbol{E}\times\boldsymbol{B}$ motion (denoted $Π_{E\times B}$) are often neglected. Here, we use the global total-$f$ gyrokinetic code XGC to study the residual stress in the core and the edge of a DIII-D H-mode plasma. Numerical results show that both $Π_\parallel^D$ and $Π_{E\times B}$ make up a significant portion of the residual stress. In particular, $Π_\parallel^D$ in the core is higher than the collisional neoclassical level in the presence of turbulence, while in the edge it represents an outflux of counter-current momentum even without turbulence. Using a recently developed ``orbit-flux'' formulation, we show that the higher-than-neoclassical-level $Π_\parallel^D$ in the core is driven by turbulence, while the outflux of counter-current momentum from the edge is mainly due to collisional ion orbit loss. These results suggest that $Π_\parallel^D$ and $Π_{E\times B}$ can be important for the study of intrinsic toroidal rotation.