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At least 181 records · Page 10

Further modeling of q 95 windows for the suppression of edge localized modes by resonant magnetic perturbations in the DIII-D tokamak

An improved resonant plasma response model that more accurately captures the physics of the interaction between a tokamak plasma and a resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) is developed. The model interpolates between the linear and the nonlinear response regimes and takes into account the fact that the slip-frequency is non-zero in the nonlinear regime. The improved model is incorporated into the extended perturbed equilibrium code (EPEC) toroidal asymptotic matching code. The modified EPEC code is used to investigate RMP-induced edge-localized-mode (ELM) suppression in DIII-D H-mode discharge #145380. Somewhat surprisingly, allowing for a finite slip-frequency (i.e., relaxing the so-called no-slip constraint) is found to only slightly facilitate the locking of driven magnetic island chains to the RMP, and, hence, to only slightly facilitate RMP-induced ELM suppression. This is true despite the fact that the nature of non-locked island solutions is radically different when the no-slip constraint is imposed compared to when it is relaxed (in the first case, the widths of the island chains driven at the rational surfaces pulsate, and in the second case, they remain steady). The previously obtained conclusion that the response of a typical H-mode tokamak plasma to an RMP cannot be accurately modeled by linear theory is confirmed. Here, the previously obtained conclusion that the best agreement between theory and observations is achieved by assuming that the natural frequencies of tearing modes, in the absence of the RMP, are determined by the local equilibrium E × B velocity is also confirmed.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Fully quantum calculations of O 2 –N 2 scattering using a new potential energy surface: Collisional perturbations of the oxygen 118 GHz fine structure line

A proper description of the collisional perturbation of the shapes of molecular resonances is important for remote spectroscopic studies of the terrestrial atmosphere. Of particular relevance are the collisions between the $\text{O}_2$ and $\text{N}_2$ molecules—the two most abundant atmospheric species. In this work, we report a new highly accurate $\text{O}_2(\text{X}^3Σ^–_g)–\text{N}_2(\text{X}^1Σ^+_g)$ potential energy surface and use it for performing the first quantum scattering calculations addressing line shapes for this system. We use it to model the shape of the 118 GHz fine structure line in $\text{O}_2$ perturbed by collisions with $\text{N}_2$ molecules, a benchmark system for testing our methodology in the case of an active molecule in a spin triplet state. The calculated collisional broadening of the line agrees well with the available experimental data over a wide temperature range relevant for the terrestrial atmosphere. This work constitutes a step toward populating the spectroscopic databases with ab initio line shape parameters for atmospherically relevant systems.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Global gyrokinetic study of shaping effects on electromagnetic modes at NSTX aspect ratio with ad hoc parallel magnetic perturbation effects

Plasma shaping may have a stronger effect on global turbulence in tight-aspect-ratio tokamaks than in conventional-aspect-ratio tokamaks due to the higher toroidicity and more acute poloidal asymmetry in the magnetic field. In addition, previous local gyrokinetic studies have shown that it is necessary to include parallel magnetic field perturbations in order to accurately compute growth rates of electromagnetic modes in tight-aspect-ratio tokamaks. In this work, the effects of elongation and triangularity on global, ion-scale, linear electromagnetic modes are studied at National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) aspect ratio and high plasma β using the global gyrokinetic particle-in-cell code XGC. The effects of compressional magnetic perturbations are approximated via a well-known modification to the particle drifts that was developed for flux-tube simulations [Joiner et al., Phys. Plasmas 17, 072104 (2010)], without proof of its validity in a global simulation, with the gyrokinetic codes GENE and GEM being used for local verification and global cross-verification. Magnetic equilibria are re-constructed for each distinct plasma profile that is used. Coulomb collision effects are not considered. Within the limitations imposed by the present study, it is found that linear growth rates of electromagnetic modes (collisionless microtearing modes and kinetic ballooning modes) are significantly reduced in a high-elongation and high-triangularity NSTX-like geometry compared to a circular NSTX-like geometry. For example, growth rates of kinetic ballooning modes at high- β are reduced to the level of that of collisionless trapped electron modes.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Studying excited-state-specific perturbation theory on the Thiel set

Here, we explore the performance of a recently introduced N 5 -scaling excited-state-specific second order perturbation theory (ESMP2) on the singlet excitations of the Thiel benchmarking set. We find that, without regularization, ESMP2 is quite sensitive to π system size, performing well in molecules with small π systems but poorly in those with larger π systems. With regularization, ESMP2 is far less sensitive to π system size and shows a higher overall accuracy on the Thiel set than CC2, equation of motion-coupled cluster with singles and doubles, CC3, and a wide variety of time-dependent density functional approaches. Unsurprisingly, even regularized ESMP2 is less accurate than multi-reference perturbation theory on this test set, which can, in part, be explained by the set’s inclusion of some doubly excited states but none of the strong charge transfer states that often pose challenges for state-averaging. Beyond energetics, we find that the ESMP2 doubles norm offers a relatively low-cost way to test for doubly excited character without the need to define an active space.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Theoretical investigation of the triggering of neoclassical tearing modes by transient resonant magnetic perturbations in NSTX

The extended perturbed equilibrium code asymptotic matching code is used to simulate the triggering of n = 1 neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) by a pulsed, rotating, n = 1, resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) in two example NSTX discharges. Although the two discharges are significantly different from one another, the results of the two sets of simulations are quite similar. The critical n = 1 RMP pulse amplitude required to trigger an n = 1 NTM is minimized when the RMP pulse rotation frequency matches the linear natural frequency of an n = 1 tearing mode, resonant within the plasma, that is metastable to an NTM. However, if there is a frequency mismatch, then the seed magnetic island chain driven at the relevant resonant surface is forced to rotate with respect to the RMP, because the RMP pulse amplitude is nowhere near sufficient to lock the island chain to the RMP. This rotation causes the critical RMP pulse amplitude required to trigger an NTM to oscillate as the RMP pulse duration is varied. Furthermore, the critical amplitude is minimized when the RMP pulse duration is such that seed island chain executes a half-integer number of rotations with respect to the pulse. All of the minima have the same value.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Vibrational heat-bath configuration interaction with semistochastic perturbation theory using harmonic oscillator or VSCF modals

Vibrational heat-bath configuration interaction (VHCI)—a selected configuration interaction technique for vibrational structure theory—has recently been developed in two independent works [J. H. Fetherolf and T. C. Berkelbach, J. Chem. Phys. 154, 074104 (2021); A. U. Bhatty and K. R. Brorsen, Mol. Phys. 119, e1936250 (2021)], where it was shown to provide accuracy on par with the most accurate vibrational structure methods with a low computational cost. Here, we eliminate the memory bottleneck of the second-order perturbation theory correction using the same (semi)stochastic approach developed previously for electronic structure theory. This allows us to treat, in an unbiased manner, much larger perturbative spaces, which are necessary for high accuracy in large systems. Stochastic errors are easily controlled to be less than 1 cm−1. We also report two other developments: (i) we propose a new heat-bath criterion and an associated exact implicit sorting algorithm for potential energy surfaces expressible as a sum of products of one-dimensional potentials; (ii) we formulate VHCI to use a vibrational self-consistent field (VSCF) reference, as opposed to the harmonic oscillator reference configuration used in previous reports. Our tests are done with quartic and sextic force fields, for which we find that with VSCF, the minor improvements to accuracy are outweighed by the higher computational cost associated the matrix element evaluations. We expect VSCF-based VHCI to be important for more general potential representations, for which the harmonic oscillator basis function integrals are no longer analytic.

Chemistry↗

Optimizing the regularization in size-consistent second-order Brillouin-Wigner perturbation theory

Despite its simplicity and relatively low computational cost, second-order Møller-Plesset perturbation theory (MP2) is well-known to overbind noncovalent interactions between polarizable monomers and some organometallic bonds. In such situations, the pairwise-additive correlation energy expression in MP2 is inadequate. Although energy-gap dependent amplitude regularization can substantially improve the accuracy of conventional MP2 in these regimes, the same regularization parameter worsens the accuracy for small molecule thermochemistry and density-dependent properties. Recently, we proposed a repartitioning of Brillouin-Wigner perturbation theory that is size-consistent to second order (BW-s2), and a free parameter ($α$) was set to recover the exact dissociation limit of H 2 in a minimal basis set. Alternatively $α$ can be viewed as a regularization parameter, where each value of $α$ represents a valid variant of BW-s2, which we denote as BW-s2($α$). In this work, we semi-empirically optimize $α$ for noncovalent interactions, thermochemistry, alkane conformational energies, electronic response properties, and transition metal datasets, leading to improvements in accuracy relative to the ab initio parameterization of BW-s2 and MP2. We demonstrate that the optimal $α$ parameter ($α$ = 4) is more transferable across chemical problems than energy-gap-dependent regularization parameters. This is attributable to the fact that the BW-s2($α$) regularization strength depends on all of the information encoded in the t amplitudes rather than just orbital energy differences. While the computational scaling of BW-s2($α$) is iterative $\mathcal{O}$($N^5$), this effective and transferable approach to amplitude regularization is a promising route to incorporate higher-order correlation effects at second-order cost.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

Simulations and models for the Richtmyer–Meshkov instability with broadband perturbations

The Richtmyer–Meshkov instability (RMI) is shock driven and affects many phenomena from inertial fusion to supernova explosions. The behavior of single-modes in the RMI has been studied extensively but less is known with the broadband perturbations that occur in applications. Here, we describe extensive numerical simulations and modeling of the RMI with broadband perturbations with an initial power spectrum of the form P ∝ km, where k is the wavenumber. The hydrodynamic condition is the same as in the θ-Group Collaboration [Thornber et al., “Late-time growth rate, mixing, and anisotropy in the multimode narrowband Richtmyer–Meshkov instability: The θ-group collaboration,” Phys. Fluids 29, 105107 (2017)] with a Mach ∼1.86 shock and gamma-law = 5/3 fluids with Atwood number A = −0.5. The bubble amplitude hB is found to grow in two stages. Initially, hB undergoes a phase-inversion and grows linearly in time (t) at a rate consistent with a linear theory. Asymptotically, hB grows as a power law ∼tθ when k|hB| > O(1), where k is the average wavenumber for the initial spectrum. The RMI behavior in simulations and modeling agree over a wide range of exponent m, spectral width, initial amplitude, and time. The agreement is quantified objectively using statistical analysis.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Performance of an atomic mean-field spin–orbit approach within exact two-component theory for perturbative treatment of spin–orbit coupling

The paper reports development of an atomic mean-field (AMF) spin–orbit approach within the spin-free exact two-component theory in its one-electron variant (SFX2C-1e), a new relativistic quantum-chemical method for treating spin-orbit coupling in molecules. The effective one-electron spin–orbit integral matrix in the four-component representation is assembled as a direct sum of one-centre spin–orbit integral matrices with the mean-field two-electron contributions evaluated using atomic SFX2C-1e Hartree–Fock density matrices. It is then transformed into two-component representation using analytic SFX2C-1e energy derivative formulation. The resulting two-component spin–orbit integral matrix is by design suitable for use in perturbative calculations of spin–orbit coupling, treating SFX2C-1e wavefunctions as unperturbed states. The accuracy of the present AMF approach has been demonstrated using benchmark calculations of spin–orbit splittings for representative diatomic radicals at the equation-of-motion coupled-cluster singles and doubles level. In conclusion, to demonstrate the applicability and accuracy of the present perturbative spin–orbit scheme in calculations of challenging heavy-element containing systems, a thorough computational investigation of six low-lying electronic states of ThO+ is reported.

74 ATOMIC AND MOLECULAR PHYSICS↗

Drift kinetic effects on plasma response to resonant magnetic perturbation for EU DEMO design

Abstract A systematic investigation of the plasma response to an externally applied resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) field, for the purpose of controlling edge localized modes, is carried out for an EU DEMO reference plasma. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of kinetic effects associated with both thermal particles and fusion-born alphas. The single fluid, resistive model predicts a large peak amplification of the n = 1 ( n is the toroidal mode number) plasma response to the target equilibrium, which is found to be close to the Troyon no-wall limit. A more advanced response model, including kinetic resonances between the RMP perturbation and drift motions of thermal and energetic particles, on the other hand, finds a strong suppression of the n = 1 field amplification. A major role is played by the precessional drift resonance of fusion-born alphas. A strong parallel sound wave damping model is found to well reproduce the full kinetic response results for the DEMO plasma, in terms of both the resonant field response amplitude and the plasma displacement. Finally, both fluid and kinetic models produce similar responses for the n = 2 and 3 RMP fields for the considered DEMO plasma, whilst kinetic effects again become important for the n = 4 RMP due to proximity of the reference plasma to the no-wall limit for the n = 4 ideal kink instability.

Physics↗

Investigating the impact of intermediate-mode perturbations on diagnosing plasma conditions in DT cryogenic implosions via synthetic x-ray Thomson scattering

The pursuit of inertial confinement fusion ignition target designs requires precise experimental validation of the conditions within imploding capsules, in particular the density and temperature of the compressed shell. Previous work has identified x-ray Thomson scattering (XRTS) as a viable diagnostic tool for inferring the in-flight compressed deuterium-tritium shell conditions during capsule implosions (Poole et al 2022 Phys. Plasmas 29 072703). However, this study focused on one-dimensional simulations, which do not account for the growth of hydrodynamic instabilities. In this work, two-dimensional DRACO simulations incorporating intermediate-mode perturbations up to Legendre mode l = 50 were used to generate synthetic XRTS spectra with the SPECT3D code. The analysis employed Markov-Chain Monte Carlo techniques to infer plasma conditions from these spectra. The results demonstrate that the XRTS diagnostic platform can effectively discern the in-flight compressed shell conditions for targets with varying adiabats, even in the presence of intermediate-mode perturbations. This work underscores the potential of XRTS for realistic inertial confinement fusion experiments, providing a robust method for probing the complex dynamics of fusion implosions.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

An analytic hybrid halo + perturbation theory model for small-scale correlators: baryons, halos, and galaxies

In this work, we update Halo Zeldovich Perturbation Theory (HZPT, [1]), an analytic model for the two-point statistics of dark matter, to describe halo and galaxy clustering, and galaxy-matter cross-correlation on nonlinear scales. The model correcting Zeldovich has an analytic Fourier transform, and therefore is valid in both configuration space and Fourier space. The model is accurate at the 2%-level or less for P_mm (k< 1 h/Mpc), P_hm (k< 1 h/Mpc), P_hh (k< 2 h/Mpc), P gm (k< 1 h/Mpc), P gg (k< 1 h/Mpc), ξ mm (r> 1 Mpc/h), ξ hm (r> 2 Mpc/h), ξ hh (r> 2 Mpc/h), ξ gm (r> 1 Mpc/h), ξ gg (r> 2 Mpc/h), for LRG-like mock galaxies. We show that the HZPT model for matter correlators can account for the effects of a wide range of baryonic feedback models and provide two extended dark matter models which are of 1% (3%) accuracy for k < 10 (8) h/Mpc. We explicitly model the non-perturbative features of halo exclusion for the halo-halo and galaxy-galaxy correlators, as well as the presence of satellites for galaxy-matter and galaxy-galaxy correlation functions. We perform density estimation using N-body simulations and a wide range of HOD galaxy mocks to obtain correlations of model parameters with the cosmological parameters Ω m and σ 8 . HZPT can provide a fast, interpretable, and analytic model for combined-probe analyses of redshift surveys using scales well into the non-linear regime.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Clustering in massive neutrino cosmologies via Eulerian Perturbation Theory

We introduce an Eulerian Perturbation Theory to study the clustering of tracers for cosmologies in the presence of massive neutrinos. Our approach is based on mapping recently-obtained Lagrangian Perturbation Theory results to the Eulerian framework. We add Effective Field Theory counterterms, IR-resummations and a biasing scheme to compute the one-loop redshift-space power spectrum. To assess our predictions, we compare the power spectrum multipoles against synthetic halo catalogues from the QUIJOTE simulations, finding excellent agreement on scales k ≲ 0.25 h Mpc-1. One can obtain the same fitting accuracy using higher wave-numbers, but then the theory fails to give a correct estimation of the linear bias parameter. We further discuss the implications for the tree-level bispectrum. Finally, calculating loop corrections is computationally costly, hence we derive an accurate approximation wherein we retain only the main features of the kernels, as produced by changes to the growth rate. As a result, we show how FFTLog methods can be used to further accelerate the loop computations with these reduced kernels.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Freeze-in dark matter perturbations are adiabatic

We show that the large-scale perturbations in the dark matter generated by the freeze-in mechanism are only of adiabatic nature. The freeze-in mechanism is not at odds with the current stringent constraints on isocurvature perturbations.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Non-perturbative production of fermionic dark matter from fast preheating

We investigate non-perturbative production of fermionic dark matter in the early universe. We study analytically the gravitational production mechanism accompanied by the coupling of fermions to the background inflaton field. The latter leads to the variation of effective fermion mass during preheating and makes the resulting spectrum and abundance sensitive to its parameters. Assuming fast preheating that completes in less than the inflationary Hubble time and no oscillations of the inflaton field after inflation, we find an abundant production of particles with energies ranging from the inflationary Hubble rate to the inverse duration of preheating. The produced fermions can account for all observed dark matter in a broad range of parameters. As an application of our analysis, we study non-perturbative production of fermionic dark matter in the model of Palatini Higgs inflation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Perturbatively including inhomogeneities in axion inflation

Axion inflation, i.e. an axion-like inflaton coupled to an Abelian gauge field through a Chern-Simons interaction, comes with a rich and testable phenomenology. This is particularly true in the strong backreaction regime, where the gauge field production heavily impacts the axion dynamics. Lattice simulations have recently demonstrated the importance of accounting for inhomogeneities of the axion field in this regime. We propose a perturbative scheme to account for these inhomogeneities while maintaining high computational efficiency. Our goal is to accurately capture deviations from the homogeneous axion field approximation within the perturbative regime as well as self-consistently determine the onset of the nonperturbative regime.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Simulation study of fast ion losses associated with the rotating n = 1 resonant magnetic perturbations in KSTAR

In this work we describe a simulation framework for testing the fast ion loss mechanism associated with the experimentally observed beam ion losses when an externally applied toroidally rotating perturbed magnetic field is used to control edge localized modes in the KSTAR tokamak. The simulations reproduce the key qualitative features of neutral beam injection (NBI) ion detection by a fast ion loss detector. The NBI ion losses in the simulation mainly occur for passing particles due to orbit stochastization, which is caused by orbit resonance with the 3D field perturbations. The relative toroidal angle of NBI ion deposition to the orbit island determines the radial path of the particles between confinement or loss. The fast ion loss quantity depends on the toroidal angle rotation of the 3D field with respect to the beam deposition position. The averaged transport of toroidal canonical angular momentum reveals that linear and nonlinear resonance of the NBI ions within the 3D field are the main factors determining fast ion transport and loss.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗

Neoclassical transport due to resonant magnetic perturbations in DIII-D

In this work, the role of neoclassical physics in the particle and energy transport during the application of resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) to suppress the edge localised modes in a tokamak is analysed. The neoclassical fluxes in non-axisymmetric DIII-D equilibria with applied RMPs are calculated using the NEO code. The magnetic field provided to NEO as an input is calculated using M3D-C1 and includes the nonlinear one-fluid plasma response. Neoclassical fluxes obtained in this study are found to dramatically increase in the presence of applied resonant magnetic perturbations, and are in same range as the total radial particle fluxes calculated in comparable RMP discharges in DIII-D. This suggests that neoclassical transport plays a significant role in edge transport when RMPs are present. An increase in neoclassical fluxes during the ELM suppressed phase in DIII-D plasmas is calculated and is strongly correlated with the observation of density pump-out in the experiment.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗