The available energy of trapped electrons: a nonlinear measure for turbulent transport

Abstract

A collisionless plasma possesses a certain amount of ‘available energy’, which is that part of the thermal energy that can be converted into kinetic energy of plasma motion and electromagnetic fluctuations. In this paper we present a calculation of the available energy carried by trapped electrons in a slender non-omnigenous flux tube of plasma. This quantity is compared with gyrokinetic simulations of the nonlinear saturated radial energy flux resulting from turbulence driven by collisionless trapped-electron modes in various stellarators and a tokamak. The numerical calculation of available energy is fast and shows a strong correlation with the turbulent energy fluxes found in the gyrokinetic simulations. Indeed, the energy flux is found to be proportional to the available energy to the power of approximately $3/2$ , which is what one would expect from a simple argument. We furthermore investigate how available energy is distributed across different bounce wells, and it is found that deeply trapped electrons typically contribute most to the available energy. Finally, we investigate the dependence of available energy on gradient strength, and we find important differences between weakly and strongly driven regimes for stellarators and tokamaks.