Characteristics of high-confinement modes in Alcator C Mod

Abstract

The regime of high particle and energy confinement known as the H mode [Phys. Rev. Lett. 49, 1408 (1982)] has been extended to a unique range of operation for divertor tokamaks up to toroidal fields of nearly 8 T, line-averaged electron densities of 3×1020 m−3, and surface power densities of nearly 0.6 MW/m2 in the compact high-field tokamak Alcator C Mod [Phys. Plasmas 1, 1511 (1994)]. H modes are achieved in Alcator C Mod with Ion Cyclotron Resonant Frequency (ICRF) heating and with Ohmic heating alone without boronization of the all molybdenum tiled first wall. Large increases in charge exchange flux are observed during the H mode over the entire range of energies from 2 to 10 keV. There appears to be an upper limit to the midplane neutral pressure, of about 0.08 Pa above which no H modes have been observed. The plasmas with the best energy confinement have the lowest midplane neutral pressures, below 0.01 Pa. There is an edge electron temperature threshold such that Te≥280 eV ±40 eV for sustaining the H mode, which is equal at L–H and H–L transitions. The hysteresis in the threshold power between L–H and H–L transitions is less than 25% on average. Both core and edge particle confinement improve by a factor of 2–4 from L mode to H mode. Energy confinement also improves by up to a factor of 2 over L mode.