Two ways for producing a transport barrier through strong shear of the E × B poloidal flow have been investigated using GYSELA gyrokinetic simulations in a flux-driven regime. The first one uses an external poloidal momentum (i.e. vorticity) source that locally polarizes the plasma, and the second one enforces a locally steep density profile that also stabilizes the ion temperature gradient (ITG) instability modes linearly. Both cases show a very low local turbulent heat diffusivity coefficient and a slight increase in core pressure when a threshold of (respectively the E × B shear rate and average linear growth rate of ITG) is reached, validating previous numerical results. This pressure increase and quench are the signs of a transport barrier formation. This behaviour is the result of a reduced turbulence intensity which strongly correlates with the shearing of turbulent structures as evidenced by a reduction of the auto-correlation length of potential fluctuations as well as an intensity reduction of the kθ spectrum. Moreover, a small shift towards smaller poloidal wavenumber is observed in the vorticity source region which could be linked to a tilt of the turbulent structures in the poloidal direction.
Simulation of ion temperature gradient turbulence in tokamaks
Toroidal and poloidal momentum transport studies in tokamaks