2016/06/06 by J. Garcia, J. García, T. Goerler +5
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Laser-Plasma Interactions and Diagnostics #Magnetic confinement fusion research #Plasma Physics (physics.plasm-ph) #physics.plasm-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1606.01606
arxiv created 2016/06/06 · openalex publication_date 2016/06/06 · arxiv updated 2016/06/07 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The efficient production of electricity from nuclear fusion in magnetically confined plasmas relies on a good confinement of the thermal energy. For more than thirty years, the observation that such confinement depends on the mass of the plasma isotope and its interaction with apparently unrelated plasma conditions has remained largely unexplained and it has become one of the main unsolved issues. By means of numerical studies based on the gyrokinetic theory, we quantitatively show how the plasma microturbulence depends on the isotope mass through nonlinear multiscale microturbulence effects involving the interplay between zonal flows, electromagnetic effects and the torque applied. This finding has crucial consequences for the design of future reactors since, in spite of the fact that they will be composed by multiple ion species, their extrapolation from present day experiments heavily relies on the knowledge obtained from a long experimental tradition based in single isotope plasmas.