Full orbit simulation of collisional transport of impurity ions in the MAST spherical tokamak

Abstract

Transport analysis of MAST discharges indicates that collisions are an important loss mechanism in the core of a tight aspect ratio tokamak. In the strongly varying equilibrium fields of MAST many of the assumptions of drift kinetic and neoclassical theory (e.g. small plasma inverse aspect ratio and low ratio of toroidal Larmor radius to poloidal Larmor radius) are not met by all particle species and it becomes appropriate to use full orbit analysis to evaluate heat and particle fluxes. Collisional transport of impurity ions (C6+ and W20+) has been studied using a full orbit solver, CUEBIT, to integrate the test-particle dynamics. Electromagnetic fields in MAST plasma have been modelled using the cylindrical and toroidal two-fluid codes CUTIE and CENTORI. A detailed study of the scaling of the test-particle diffusivity with collisionality in the equilibrium field reveals deviations from the standard neoclassical theory, in both the Pfirsch–Schlüter and banana regimes, and difficulties in defining a local diffusivity at low collisionalities. The effect of electric and magnetic fluctuations is also briefly addressed. It is found that field fluctuations enhance the non-diffusive nature of transport. The full orbit analysis presented here predicts levels of transport and confinement times for the examined species broadly consistent with the experimental observations.