Anomalous diffusion, clustering, and pinch of impurities in plasma edge turbulence

Abstract

The turbulent transport of impurity particles in plasma edge turbulence is investigated. The impurities are modeled as a passive fluid advected by the electric and polarization drifts, while the ambient plasma turbulence is modeled using the two-dimensional Hasegawa--Wakatani paradigm for resistive drift-wave turbulence. The features of the turbulent transport of impurities are investigated by numerical simulations using a novel code that applies semi-Lagrangian pseudospectral schemes. The diffusive character of the turbulent transport of ideal impurities is demonstrated by relative-diffusion analysis of the evolution of impurity puffs. Additional effects appear for inertial impurities as a consequence of compressibility. First, the density of inertial impurities is found to correlate with the vorticity of the electric drift velocity, that is, impurities cluster in vortices of a precise orientation determined by the charge of the impurity particles. Second, a radial pinch scaling linearly with the mass--charge ratio of the impurities is discovered. Theoretical explanation for these observations is obtained by analysis of the model equations.