Total-f electromagnetic global simulations of core turbulent transport in negative triangularity tokamaks

Turbulent transport is the dominant mechanism of transport in tokamaks, and is caused by micro-scale instabilities such as ITG, TEM, and KBM modes. The impact of negative triangularity on these and other instabilities, as well as on global nonlinear transport, is a topic still under investigation. We conduct total-f simulations with the global gyrokinetic code XGC in an electromagnetic model to observe and characterize turbulent phenomena in the core of a pair of DIII-D-based model equilibria. We compare the nature of turbulent mode activity and fluxes between positive and negative triangularity mirror image equilibria. Full neoclassical effects are included self-consistently with turbulence physics.