Barriers for the reduction of transport due to the EXB drift in magnetized plasmas

We consider a 1 1/2degrees of freedom Hamiltonian dynamical system, which models the chaotic dynamics of charged test-particles in a turbulent electric field, across the confining magnetic field in controlled thermonuclear fusion devices. The external electric field E = −∇V is modeled by a phenomenological potential V and the magnetic field B is considered uniform. It is shown that, by introducing a small additive control term to the external electric field, it is possible to create a transport barrier for this dynamical system. The robustness of this control method is also investigated. This theoretical study indicates that alternative transport barriers can be triggered without requiring a control action on the device scale as in present Internal Transport Barriers (ITB).