Quantitative validation studies of flux-tube gyrokinetic Vlasov simulations on ion and electron heat transport are carried out for the JT-60U tokamak experiment. The ion temperature gradient (ITG) and/or trapped electron modes (TEM) driven turbulent transport and zonal flow generations are investigated for an L-mode plasma in the local turbulence limit with a sufficiently small normalized ion thermal gyroradius and weak mean radial electric fields. Nonlinear turbulence simulations by the GKV code successfully reproduce radial profiles of the ion and electron energy fluxes in the core region. The numerical results show that the TEM-driven zonal flow generation in the outer region is more significant than that in the core region with ITG- and ITG–TEM-dominated turbulence, leading to moderate transport shortfall of the ion energy flux. Error levels in the prediction of the ion and electron temperature gradient profiles in the core region are estimated as less than , based on a multiple flux matching technique, where the simulated ion and electron energy fluxes are simultaneously matched to the experimental values.
How accurate are flux-tube (local) gyrokinetic codes in modeling energetic particle effects on core turbulence?