Fluid and gyrokinetic modelling of particle transport in plasmas with hollow density profiles

Hollow density profiles occur in connection with pellet fuelling and L to H transitions. A positive density gradient could potentially stabilize the turbulence or change the relation between convective and diffusive fluxes, thereby reducing the turbulent transport of particles towards the center, making the fuelling scheme inefficient. In the present work, the particle transport driven by ITG/TE mode turbulence in regions of hollow density profiles is studied by fluid as well as gyrokinetic simulations. The fluid model used, an extended version of the Weiland transport model, Extended Drift Wave Model (EDWM), incorporates an arbitrary number of ion species in a multi-fluid description, and an extended wavelength spectrum. The fluid model, which is fast and hence suitable for use in predictive simulations, is compared to gyrokinetic simulations using the code GENE. Typical tokamak parameters are used based on the Cyclone Base Case. Parameter scans in key plasma parameters like plasma β, R/L_T, and magnetic shear are investigated. It is found that β in particular has a stabilizing effect in the negative R/L_n region, both nonlinear GENE and EDWM show a decrease in inward flux for negative R/L_n and a change of direction from inward to outward for positive R/L_n. This might have serious consequences for pellet fuelling of high β plasmas.