Gyrokinetic theory and simulation of turbulent energy exchange

A previous gyrokinetic theory of turbulent heating [F. L. Hinton and R. E. Waltz, Phys. Plasma 13, 102301 (2006)] is simplified and extended to show that the local radial average of terms in the gyrokinetic turbulent heating (which survive in the drift kinetic limit) are actually closer to a turbulent energy exchange between electrons and ions. The integrated flow for the local exchange is simulated with the GYRO [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J. Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003)] delta-f gyrokinetic code and found to be small in a well studied DIII-D [M. A. Mahdavi and J. L. Luxon, “DIII-D Tokamak Special Issue” Fusion Sci. Technol. 48, 2 (2005)] L-mode discharge.