The Berk - Breizman Model as a Paradigm for Energetic Particle - driven Alfvén Eigenmodes by Maxime Lesur

The achievement of sustained nuclear fusion in magnetically confined plasma relies on efficient confinement of alpha particles, which are high-energy ions produced by the fusion reaction. Such particles can excite instabilities in the frequency range of Alfvén Eigenmodes (AEs), which significantly degrade their confinement and threatens the vacuum vessel of future reactors. In order to develop diagnostics and control schemes, a better understanding of linear and nonlinear features of resonant interactions between plasma waves and high-energy particles, which is the aim of this thesis, is required. In the case of an isolated single resonance, the description of AE destabilization by high-energy ions is homothetic to the so-called Berk-Breizman (BB) problem, which is an extension of the classic bump-on-tail electrostatic problem, including external damping to a thermal plasma, and collisions. A semi-Lagrangian simulation code, COBBLES, is developed to solve the initial-value BB problem in both perturbative (δf) and self-consistent (full-f) approaches. Two collision models are considered, namely a Krook model, and a model that includes dynamical friction (drag) and velocity-space diffusion. The nonlinear behavior of instabilities in experimentally-relevant conditions is categorized into steady-state, periodic, chaotic, and frequency-sweeping (chirping) regimes, depending on external damping rate and collision frequency. The chaotic regime is shown to extend into a linearly stable region, and a mechanism that solves the paradox formed by the existence of such subcritical instabilities is proposed. Analytic and semi-empirical laws for nonlinear chirping characteristics, such as sweeping-rate, lifetime, and asymmetry, are developed and validated. Long-time simulations demonstrate the existence of a quasi-periodic chirping regime. Although the existence of such regime stands for both collision models, drag and diffusion are essential to reproduce the alternation between major chirping events and quiescent phases, which is observed in experiments. Based on these findings, a new method for analyzing fundamental kinetic plasma parameters, such as linear drive and external damping rate, is developed. The method, which consists of fitting procedures between COBBLES simulations and quasi-periodic chirping AE experiments, does not require any internal diagnostics. This approach is applied to Toroidicity-induced AEs (TAEs) on JT-60 Upgrade and Mega-Amp Spherical Tokamak devices, which yields estimations of local kinetic parameters and suggests the existence of TAEs relatively far from marginal stability. The results are validated by recovering measured growth and decay of perturbation amplitude, and by estimating collision frequencies from experimental equilibrium data. te l-0 05 63 11 0, v er si on 1 4 Fe b 20 11