In the present work, the turbulent transport in fusion plasmas is investigated by means of nonlinear ab initio simulations. Therefore the gyrokinetic Vlasov-Maxwell system is solved numerically. The existing GENE Code is upgraded substantially by introducing new numerical methods. Furthermore, the treatment of magnetically trapped particles is made possible by including the magnetic mirror term in the Vlasov equation. So the turbulence driven by the trapped electrons modes (TEM) can be investigated. The basic characteristics of this kind of turbulence is systematically analyzed for the first time, where we find a dependence of the transport on the safety factor, which corresponds to experimental observations. Additionally, we find an effective critical temperature gradient in nonlinear calculations and analyze its variation with the density gradient. Furthermore we investigate the dependence of the transport on the magnetic shear, the inverse aspect ratio, and on the density gradient. Most of these dependencies can be described by a simple quasilinear transport model, which only fails for large gradients, where nonlinear results show a decoupling of particle and heat transport. A second part of the work is about turbulence driven by the ion temperature gradient (ITG). In particular the behaviour of the ion heat transport with finite plasma beta (beta is the ratio of plasma pressure to magnetic pressure) is investigated. One characteristic of this turbulence is the shift of the electromagnetic transport, caused by magnetic fluctuations, to larger spatial scales in comparison to the purely electrostatic transport. Additionally we observe a rapid growth of the transport at a pressure gradient of about 90% of the critical pressure gradient of the ideal magnetohydrodynamics. The last part of the work reports on coupled ITG/TEM turbulence, with a focus on the particle transport. So we find an inward transport (pinch) of particles in two different turbulence regimes. For the ITG-pinch, the ITG turbulence is dominant and trapped electrons are transported inwards, where at the TEM-pinch the TEM turbulence dominates and the passing electrons are transported inwards.
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In the present work, the turbulent transport in fusion plasmas is investigated by means of nonlinear ab initio simulations. Therefore the gyrokinetic Vlasov-Maxwell system is solved numerically. The existing GENE Code is upgraded substantially by introducing new numerical methods. Furthermore, the treatment of magnetically trapped particles is made possible by including the magnetic mirror term in the Vlasov equation. So the turbulence driven by the trapped electrons modes (TEM) can be investiga...
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