Limitations, insights and improvements to gyrokinetics

We first consider gyrokinetic quasineutrality limitations when evaluating the axisymmetric radial electric field in a non-turbulent tokamak by an improved examination of intrinsic ambipolarity. We next prove that the background ions in a pedestal of poloidal ion gyroradius scale must be Maxwellian and nearly isothermal in Pfirsch-Schlüter and banana regime tokamak plasmas, and then consider zonal flow behaviour in a pedestal. Finally, we focus on a simplifying procedure for our transport time scale hybrid gyrokinetic-fluid treatment that removes the limitations of gyrokinetic quasineutrality and remains valid in the pedestal.