Benchmark of gyrokinetic, kinetic MHD and gyrofluid codes for the linear calculation of fast particle driven TAE dynamics

Abstract

Fast particles in fusion plasmas may drive Alfven modes unstable leading to fluctuations of the internal electromagnetic fields and potential loss of particles. Such instabilities can have an impact on the performance and the wall-load of machines with burning plasmas such as ITER. A linear benchmark for a toroidal Alfven eigenmode (TAE) is done with 11 participating codes with a broad variation in the physical as well as the numerical models. A reasonable agreement of around 20% has been found for the growth rates. Also, the agreement of the eigenfunctions and mode frequencies is satisfying. However, they are found to depend strongly on the complexity of the used model.