Vanishing of Dimits Shift in Realistic Fusion Plasmas with Negative Magnetic Shear

Abstract: This study employs gyrokinetic simulations to investigate ion temperature gradient (ITG) turbulence in realistic fusion plasmas featuring reverse magnetic shear. Negative magnetic shear is found to suppress the ITG instability due to the scarcity of mode rational surfaces, as evidenced by a comparison of instabilities for different magnetic shears. This suppression effect remains observable in nonlinear turbulence with zonal flow artificially eliminated, where the emergence of turbulence solitons aligns with mode rational surface peaks. However, the suppression effect diminishes in the presence of self-consistently generated zonal flow, along with the occurance of turbulence solitons. The zonal flow is found to originated from a force driven process by the primary instability, instead of the conventional modulational instability. The study further reveals a remarkable phenomenon that the Dimits shift no longer exists for negative magnetic shear, which are attributed to the weakness of zonal flow around marginal stability. However, away from marginal stability, the turbulent transport is primarily regulated by the zonal flow regardless of different magnetic shears.