Microturbulence-mediated route for energetic ion transport and Alfv\'enic mode intermittency in tokamaks

Abstract

We report on a theoretical discovery of new regimes of Alfv\'en eigenmode (AE) induced fast ion transport in tokamak plasmas, where microturbulence plays the role of a mediator of fast ion relaxation. Coulomb collisional scattering alone leads to small AE amplitudes and does not reproduce the steady state regimes observed in experiments. We show that in nonlinear regimes the effective pitch angle scattering due to microturbulence can lead to steady state AE amplitude evolution. This indicates a new route for fast ion losses, which is beyond the scenarios described in "Energetic ion transport by microturbulence is insignificant in tokamaks" [D. C. Pace et al., Phys. Plasmas 20 (2013) 056108]. As a result, microturbulence can significantly increase the amplitude of AEs in predictive simulations of burning plasma experiments such as ITER.