Perturbative thermal diffusivity from partial sawtooth crashes in Alcator C-Mod

Perturbative thermal diffusivity has been measured on Alcator C-Mod via the use of the extended-time-to-peak method on heat pulses generated by partial sawtooth crashes. Perturbative thermal diffusivity governs the propagation of heat pulses through a plasma. It differs from power balance thermal diffusivity, which governs steady state thermal transport. Heat pulses generated by sawtooth crashes have been used extensively in the past to study heat pulse thermal diffusivity (Lopes Cardozo 1995 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion37 799), but the details of the sawtooth event typically lead to non-diffusive 'ballistic' transport, making them an unreliable measure of perturbative diffusivity on many tokamaks (Fredrickson et al 2000 Phys. Plasmas7 5051). Partial sawteeth are common on numerous tokamaks, and generate a heat pulse without the 'ballistic' transport that often accompanies full sawteeth (Fredrickson et al 2000 Phys. Plasmas7 5051). This is the first application of the extended-time-to-peak method of diffusivity calculation (Tubbing et al 1987 Nucl. Fusion27 1843) to partial sawtooth crashes. This analysis was applied to over 50 C-Mod shots containing both L- and I-Mode. Results indicate correlations between perturbative diffusivity and confinement regime (L- versus I-mode), as well as correlations with local temperature, density, the associated gradients, and gradient scale lengths (a/LTe and a/Ln). In addition, diffusivities calculated from partial sawteeth are compared to perturbative diffusivities calculated with the nonlinear gyrokinetic code GYRO. We find that standard ion-scale simulations (ITG/TEM turbulence) under-predict the perturbative thermal diffusivity, but new multi-scale (ITG/TEM coupled with ETG) simulations can match the experimental perturbative diffusivity within error bars for an Alcator C-Mod L-mode plasma. Perturbative diffusivities extracted from heat pulses due to partial sawteeth provide a new constraint that can be used to validate gyrokinetic simulations.