Modeling of ion heating from viscous damping of reconnection flows in the reversed field pinch

Strong self-heating of ions is observed in the reversed field pinch (RFP). During a sawtooth crash in the Madison Symmetric Torus RFP, the ion temperature can spontaneously double in ∼100 μs. It is also observed that high Z impurities are heated more strongly than bulk ions. The possibility of ion heating due to tearing instabilities at sawtooth crash is examined. Heating scenarios due to viscous damping of strongly localized perpendicular and parallel flows driven in the vicinity of resonant surface in tearing mode are considered. Flow amplitudes and spatial scales are estimated from linear and nonlinear resistive magnetohydrodynamic modeling. The heating rates are found from kinetic models with different levels of approximation, up to solving kinetic equation with a Landau collision operator. Results show reasonable agreement of the modeled impurity heating rate with the experiment, while the estimated bulk ions heating is somewhat weaker than in the experiment. Further theoretical and experimental study are required for a more definite conclusion as to whether it is the main ion heating mechanism or if there is some other important ion heating scenario.