Evolution of the high-field-side radiation belts during the neon seeding plasma discharge in EAST tokamak

Abstract

Divertor detachment achieved by injecting impurities or increasing density is always accompanied with various local radiation phenomena in the boundary or core plasma. This paper presents the formation and evolution of the high-field-side (HFS) radiation belts during the neon seeding plasma discharge in upper single null configuration with two directions of toroidal magnetic field in EAST tokamak. The neon mixed with deuterium seeding can induce the divertor detachment with strong radiation belts in the HFS scrape-off layer (SOL) region. With the increase of the radiation power, the plasma discharge will transit from H-mode to L-mode, and meanwhile the radiation belts move away from the near X-point to HFS SOL. When the radiation power is high enough, the radiation belts begin to move further to the other X-point along the HFS SOL, and even cause plasma disruption. The results indicate that the behavior of the radiation belts is related to the radiation power, plasma confinement performance and state of divertor detachment, which is useful for developing better feedback control methods to achieve high-performance radiative divertor operation mode.