Kinetic non-Maxwellians, from theory to experiments

This contribution shows strong progresses on the analytic prediction of some kinetic effects (e.g., presence of super-thermal particles) on a selection of theories which usually assume a Maxwellian distribution function (MDF). The new method developed is based on the use of non-orthogonal basis sets to represent analytic non-Maxwellian distribution functions (NMDFs). This choice is motivated by its efficiency to model experimental and numerical NMDFs computed by PIC or Fokker-Plank codes and its capability to extract physical interpretation. We particularly introduce an interpreted NMDF which helped to understand the origin of the TS-ECE discrepancy (up to 20\% on the electron temperature due to less than 2\% of non-thermalized particles) observed in JET and TFTR. Additional results are discussed such as the inconsistency of the empirical SEE formula with a MDF, and the replacement of a diffusion ad-hoc coefficient by NMDFs. Finally, we show inclusion of kinetic effects in generalized fluid models and we focus our discussion on experimental perspectives toward NSTX-U measurements of NMDFs with different diagnostics. A part of this work is disseminated in Refs.[1,2].\newline [1] O. Izacard, Phys. Plasmas 23, 082504 (2016) [2] O. Izacard, Submitted to J. Plasma Phys. (2016)\newline Footnote: LLNL-ABS-702319