Observation of Cross-Field Transport of Pellet Plasmoid in LHD

Abstract

A three-dimensional observation of the solid hydrogen pellet ablation has been performed by using a fast stereo imaging camera to investigate the pellet ablation dynamics. The initial velocity component of the injected pellet is maintained during ablation in a hot plasma, and the pellet penetrates to the core plasma. On the other hand, it has been observed that part of high density pellet plasmoid, which is formed around the pellet substance by ablating hydrogen pellet, intermittently breaks away from the pellet ablating position and the breakaway plasmoid is transported across a confinement field. The breakaway plasmoid recurrently develops at the rate of about 100 times per millisecond and it is non-diffusively transported approximately 0.1 m during its several 10 µs lifetime in the opposite direction to the pellet motion, namely, toward the low magnetic field side. This observation gives a reasonable explanation for the difference between the pellet ablation position and the effective particle deposition profile.