Parametric excitation of axisymmetric toroidal electrostatic mode by drift wave turbulences

Abstract

The axisymmetric toroidal electrostatic mode discussed in this paper refers collectively to the nearly ideal electrostatic fluid mode with zero toroidal mode number in magnetically confined toroidal plasmas like tokamak, including geodesic acoustic mode, sound waves and the so-called nearly zero-frequency zonal flow. Use is made of cold ion fluid model in the toroidal coordinate system with a circular cross section to develop the theory of parametric excitation for the three above mentioned modes systematically to the first order of inverse large aspect ratio, which ends up with the four following observations: (1) The density zonal flow is only associated with the excitation of the first harmonic cosine sound wave and is independent of the potential zonal flow. (2) The geodesic acoustic mode is the high frequency branch of the dispersion in the form of coupling between the first harmonic sine sound wave and the nearly zero-frequency zonal flow due to geodesic curvature, while the low frequency branch of the same dispersion is identified to be the ‘toroidally modified nearly zero-frequency zonal flow’. (3) Only a weak coupling exists between the second harmonic sine sound wave and the nearly zero-frequency zonal flow. (4) All cosine sound waves and sine sound waves beyond the second harmonic are decoupled to the nearly zero-frequency zonal flow. A Gaussian type of drift wave energy spectrum with only a few parameters is introduced for calculation. Emphasis is laid on the effects resulting from the finite radial spectrum width such as double Landau-singularity, which reveal a significant modification to the δ -spectrum, thus resulting in serious restriction to the parametric excitation of geodesic acoustic mode and nearly zero-frequency zonal flow. Also discussed is the possibility of excitation of density zonal flow in the high q region. Numerical results are presented graphically and discussed in the reasonable physical regime. It is indicated that the geodesic acoustic mode and the nearly zero-frequency zonal flow cannot be parametrically excited at the same radii, and that if the geodesic acoustic mode is parametrically excited, the density zonal flow is expectedly to be observed.