Gyrokinetic determination of the electrostatic potential of rotating magnetic islands in tokamaks

The electrostatic potential related to a magnetic island structure with imposed width and rotation frequency is studied by means of gyrokinetic simulations, which allow its self-consistent determination via the Poisson equation. An adiabatic response of the trapped ions at the island separatrix leads to a significant smoothing of the potential with respect to analytic calculations based on a complete flattening of the pressure profile inside the island. As a consequence, the magnitude of the polarization current is drastically reduced. When the island size is comparable to the ion banana width, the adiabatic response covers the whole island region, leading to a reduced density flattening for islands rotating in the electron diamagnetic direction. This confirms previous results based on drift-kinetic simulations.