Gyrokinetic simulation of isotope scaling in tokamak plasmas

A three-dimensional global gyrokinetic particle code in toroidal geometry has been used for investigating the transport properties of ion temperature gradient (ITG) drift instabilities in tokamak plasmas. Using the isotopes of hydrogen (H{sup +}), deuterium (D{sup +}) and tritium (T{sup +}), we have found that, under otherwise identical conditions, there exists a favorable isotope scaling for the ion thermal diffusivity, i.e., Xi decreases with mass. Such a scaling, which exists both at the saturation of the instability and also at the nonlinear steady state, can be understood from the resulting wavenumber and frequency spectra.