Role of density gradient driven trapped electron mode turbulence in the H-mode inner core with electron heating

A series of DIII-D [J. L. Luxon, Nucl. Fusion 42, 614 (2002)] low torque quiescent H-mode experiments show that density gradient driven trapped electron mode (DGTEM) turbulence dominates the inner core of H-mode plasmas during strong electron cyclotron heating (ECH). Adding 3.4 MW ECH doubles Te/Ti from 0.5 to 1.0, which halves the linear DGTEM critical density gradient, locally reducing density peaking, while transport in all channels displays extreme stiffness in the density gradient. This suggests that fusion α-heating may degrade inner core confinement in H-mode plasmas with moderate density peaking and low collisionality, with equal electron and ion temperatures, key conditions expected in burning plasmas. Gyrokinetic simulations using GYRO [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J. Comput. Phys. 186, 545 (2003)] (and GENE [Jenko et al., Phys. Plasmas 7, 1904 (2000)]) closely match not only particle, energy, and momentum fluxes but also density fluctuation spectra from Doppler backscattering (DBS), with and without ECH. Inner core DBS density fluctuations display discrete frequencies with adjacent toroidal mode numbers, which we identify as DGTEMs. GS2 [Dorland et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 85, 5579 (2000)] predictions show the DGTEM can be suppressed, to avoid degradation with electron heating, by broadening the current density profile to attain q0>qmin>1.