Lagrangian features of turbulent transport in tokamak plasmas: the Cyclone Base Case

This study investigates the Lagrangian properties of ion turbulent transport driven by drift-type turbulence in tokamak plasmas focusing on the Cyclone Base Case. Despite the compressible and inhomogeneous nature of Eulerian gyrocentre drifts, numerical simulations with the T3ST code reveal approximate ergodicity, stationarity and time-symmetry. These characteristics are attributed to broad initial phase-space distributions that support ergodic mixing. Moreover, relatively minor constraints on the initial distributions are found to have negligible effects on transport levels.