Modelling of ion energy transport in perturbed magnetic field in collisionless toroidal plasma

Although all physical parameters of background plasma and magnetic field are fixed, it is not trivial that transport coefficients in an ergodic region bounded radially on both sides can be always evaluated as constants with respect to time because of non-Brownian motion of guiding centres in low-collisionality cases, as shown previously in mono-energetic test-particle simulations by Maluckov et al (2003 Physica A 322 13). Here the ergodic region consists of chaotic magnetic field lines caused by resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs). In order to understand the fundamental properties of transport phenomena in the radially bounded ergodic region, a new computer simulation code based on the δf method solving the drift kinetic equation is developed and the energy transport of ions (protons) in the perturbed magnetic field is investigated in low-collisionality cases. We evaluate the ion thermal diffusivity as a constant with respect to time by using a quasi-steady-state solution of the guiding centre distribution function in five-dimensional phase space and find that the diffusivity depends on both the strength of the RMPs and the collision frequency. The diffusivity estimated by the δf simulation in the ergodic region is extremely small compared with the prediction of field-line diffusion theory. The radial transport is affected by the fact that the width of the ergodic region is finite.