Nonlinear velocity redistribution caused by energetic-particle-driven geodesic acoustic modes, mapped with the beam-plasma system

Abstract

The nonlinear dynamics of energetic-particle (EP) driven geodesic acoustic modes (EGAM) in tokamaks is investigated, and compared with the beam-plasma system (BPS). The EGAM is studied with the global gyrokinetic (GK) particle-in-cell code ORB5, treating the thermal ions and EP (in this case, fast ions) as GK and neglecting the kinetic effects of the electrons. The wave–particle nonlinearity is only considered in the EGAM nonlinear dynamics. The BPS is studied with a one-dimensional code where the thermal plasma is treated as a linear dielectric, and the EP (in this case, fast electrons) with an N-body Hamiltonian formulation. A one-to-one mapping between the EGAM and the BPS is described. The focus is on understanding and predicting the EP redistribution in phase space. We identify here two distinct regimes for the mapping: in the low-drive regime, the BPS mapping with the EGAM is found to be complete, and in the high-drive regime, the EGAM dynamics and the BPS dynamics are found to differ. The transition is described with the presence of a non-negligible frequency chirping, which affects the EGAM but not the BPS, above the identified drive threshold. The difference can be resolved by adding an ad hoc frequency modification to the BPS model. As a main result, the formula for the prediction of the nonlinear width of the velocity redistribution around the resonance velocity is provided. This article is written as the second of a series of articles (the first being Biancalani et al. (J. Plasma Phys., vol. 83 (6), 2017, 725830602)) on the saturation of EGAMs due to wave–particle nonlinearity.