Collisional dynamics of Er in turbulent plasmas in toroidal geometry

The gyrokinetic full f simulation code ELMFIRE has been used to perform the first global self-consistent computational study of the dynamics of the radial electric field in the presence of turbulence in an experimental toroidal configuration. Parameters have been taken from the FT-2 tokamak. Appreciable differences have been found in comparison with the neo-classical analytic estimate of radial electric field, specially in the outer region with higher level of turbulence. Similar differences have previously been observed in experiments. The analysis included in this work does not support the hypothesis of the neo-classical non-ambipolar transport from finite Larmor-radius effects as a source of discrepancies, but qualitatively supports the theory of eddy viscosity producing those deviations from standard neo-classical theory.