Nonlinear equilibria and transport processes in burning plasmas

In this work, we further develop a general phase-space transport theory in axisymmetric tokamak plasmas based upon the concept of zonal state (ZS). Within this theoretical framework, ZS corresponds to a renormalized nonlinear equilibrium consisting of phase space zonal structures (PSZS) and zonal electromagnetic fields (ZFs) which evolve self-consistently with symmetry breaking fluctuations and sources/collisions. More specifically, our theoretical approach involves deriving governing equations of the distribution function as well as applying the Chew Goldberger Low (CGL) description to separate the spatiotemporal microscale structures and the macro-/meso- scale components of this equilibrium. The nonlinear physics of zonal flows and of geodesic acoustic modes/energetic particle driven geodesic acoustic modes is then analyzed in details to illustrate the implications of this theoretical framework.