Electron heat transport from stochastic fields in gyrokinetic simulations

GYRO is used to examine the perturbed magnetic field structure generated by electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations of the CYCLONE base case as βe is varied from 0.1% to 0.7%, as investigated by J. Candy [Phys. Plasmas 12, 072307 (2005)]. Poincare surface of section plots obtained from integrating the self-consistent magnetic field demonstrates widespread stochasticity for all nonzero values of βe. Despite widespread stochasticity of the perturbed magnetic fields, no significant increase in electron transport is observed. The magnetic diffusion, dm [A. B. Rechester and M. N. Rosenbluth, Phys. Rev. Lett 40, 38 (1978)], is used to quantify the degree of stochasticity and related to the electron heat transport for hundreds of time slices in each simulation.