Nature of the isotope effect on transport in tokamaks

The reduction of energy and particle losses with the increasing mass of the hydrogen isotope is more pronounced under conditions of improved confinement when the dominant ion temperature gradient instability is suppressed and other channels of anomalous transport are of importance. In this Letter, we reconsider the dissipative trapped electron (DTE) instability by taking into account finite Larmor radius effects in the analysis of the ion response to perturbations. By applying the improved mixing length approximation in order to estimate the transport coefficients, it is demonstrated that DTE contribution is intrinsically dependent on the isotope mass and provides a plausible explanation for the isotope effect. Contrary to the common belief, it is shown that the DTE turbulence may be of importance for reactor plasmas of low collisionality.