Session UI1 - Turbulence, Internal Transport Barriers and Turbulent Transport.
INVITED session, Friday morning, October 31
Kiva, ACC
Theoretical tools applied to lab and astrophysical plasmas tend toward two extremes: kinetic models rife with physics but operating for short times and fluid models employing simplified closure relations but operating for long times. Until computers are fast enough to calculate kinetic physics over resistive times, efforts to extend plasma fluid models to handle a wider range of physics are critical. In this work, we generalize the program of fluid closure to capture kinetic effects in nonlocal, integral forms for higher-order fluid moments. These closures embody collisional, particle-trapping and Landau physics by integrating the fluid drives and closure moments along characteristics of the distribution function, F. The inversion of an operator that includes these physical effects begins with an expansion in eigenfunctions of the collision operator. Next, the characteristics of F are identified by diagonalizing the resultant system of hyperbolic equations. Integrating and taking the closure moments of F results in coupled Volterra equations involving the fluid drives and closures. It is shown that the collisional and nearly collisionless limits of these integral equations match onto previous expressions. In addition to significantly advancing the realism of previous fluid closures, integration along comparatively few (\sim 100)characteristics represents a significant reduction in work compared to kinetic treatments that follow millions of particles. These characteristics uncover the essential velocity-space dependence of F and hence render this closure scheme suitable for simulation of long time scale behavior. As a specific example, we conclude this talk by discussing the incorporation of these closures in plasma fluid simulations of neoclassical tearing modes in ITER-relevant discharges.