Collisional damping for ion temperature gradient mode driven zonal flow

Zonal flow helps reduce and control the level of ion temperature gradient turbulence in a tokamak. The collisional damping of zonal flow has been estimated by Hinton and Rosenbluth (HR) in the large radial wavelength limit. Their calculation shows that the damping of zonal flow is closely related to the frequency response of neoclassical polarization of the plasma. Based on a variational principle, HR calculated the neoclassical polarization in the low and high collisionality limits. A new approach, based on an eigenfunction expansion of the collision operator, is employed to evaluate the neoclassical polarization and the zonal flow residual for arbitrary collisionality. An analytical expression for the temporal behavior of the zonal flow is also given showing that the damping rate tends to be somewhat slower than previously thought. These results are expected to be useful extensions of the original HR collisional work that can provide an effective benchmark for numerical codes for all regimes of collisionality. (c) 2007 American Institute of Physics.