Impurity transport studies by means of tracer-encapsulated solid pellet injection in neutral beam heated plasmas on LHD

Abstract

The quantitative properties of impurity transport in large helical device (LHD) plasmas heated by neutral beam injection have been investigated by means of tracer-encapsulated solid pellet (TESPEL) injection. In the case of a titanium (Ti) tracer, the behaviour of the emission lines from the highly ionized Ti impurity, Ti Kα(EHe−like∼4.7 keV) and Ti XIX (λ = 16.959 nm), has been observed clearly by a soft x-ray pulse height analyzer and a vacuum ultraviolet spectrometer, respectively. A fairly longer decay time of the Ti Kα emission lines is obtained above the value of a line-averaged electron density, 3.0×1019 m−3. The dependence of the behaviour of the Ti tracer impurity on the line-averaged electron density below the value of that, 3.5×1019 m−3 is in qualitative agreement with the characteristics obtained from the observation of the behaviour of an intrinsic metallic impurity in neutral beam heated plasmas on LHD. In order to estimate the properties of the Ti impurity transport quantitatively, the one-dimensional impurity transport code, MIST has been used. As a result of the transport analysis with the MIST code, even an small inward convection should be necessary to account for the experimental results with the value of the line-averaged electron density, 3.5×1019 m−3. In order to examine the experimentally obtained transport coefficients, neoclassical analysis with respect to the radial impurity flux has been performed. The inferred rise of the inward convection cannot be explained solely by neoclassical impurity transport. Therefore, in order to account for the inward convection, the effect of a radial electric field and/or some other effect must be taken into account additionally.