Carbon impurity transport around limiters in the DITE tokamak

Abstract

The transport of impurity ions originating at the limiter in a tokamak is critically dependent on the location of the ion in the boundary plasma. In the confined plasma, just inboard of the limiter, impurity ions will disperse freely into the discharge whilst in the scrape-off layer the pre-sheath plasma flow and the associated ambipolar electric field may tend to sweep impurities back to the limiter surface. In this paper we have studied, both by experiment and by theory, the transport of carbon impurity ions in the vicinity of the limiter. By comparing experimental measurements of the spatial distributions of impurities around the limiter with that predicted from a Monte Carlo computer code it appears that the parallel dispersal on closed field lines in the confined plasma is consistent with classical transport processes and that in the scrape-off layer the dispersal is indeed impeded by the pre-sheath plasma flow.