Gyrofluid computation of magnetic perturbation effects on turbulence and edge localized bursts

Abstract

The effects of non-axisymmetric resonant magnetic perturbation fields (RMPs) on saturated drift-wave turbulence and on ballooning mode bursts in the edge pedestal of tokamak plasmas are investigated by numerical simulations with a nonlinear six-moment electromagnetic gyrofluid model including zonal profile evolution. The vacuum RMP fields are screened by plasma response currents, so that magnetic transport by perturbed parallel motion is not significantly changed. Radial transport of both particles and heat is dominated by turbulent convection even for large RMP amplitudes, where formation of stationary convective structures leads to edge profile degradation. Modelling of ideal ballooning mode unstable edge profiles for single bursts including RMP fields causes resonant mode locking and destabilization.