Gyrokinetic investigation of toroidal Alfvén eigenmode (TAE) turbulence

Toroidal Alfvén eigenmodes (TAEs) can transport fusion-born energetic particles out of the plasma volume, thereby decreasing plasma self-heating efficiency and possibly damaging reactor walls. Therefore, understanding TAE destabilization and identifying saturation mechanisms are crucial to achieving burning plasma. Here, a fully gyrokinetic study is employed. In the case studied, the primary drive mechanism is identified as the resonance between the magnetic drifts and the TAE, and this is seen to be disrupted by equilibrium flow shear, which can stabilize the mode by rotating it in the poloidal plane. It is found that zonal flows do not play a significant role in the saturation of these TAEs and that there are no saturation mechanisms present in the local gyrokinetic picture, which are able to saturate the mode at physically relevant transport levels in the case of TAE-only turbulence. Instead, we confirm that the global profile flattening of fast-ion density is the key saturation mechanism. The nonlinear excitation of TAEs traveling along the electron diamagnetic direction and its beating with the ion diamagnetic TAE, resulting in large amplitude oscillations that may help detect TAEs more easily in tokamaks, are also reported.