Parametric dependence of turbulent particle transport in high density electron heated FTU plasmas

Abstract

In this paper we present the result of a study carried out at the Frascati Tokamak Upgrade (FTU), on a set of full non-inductive current driven, electron heated, L-mode discharges aimed at investigating the parametric dependence of the electron density profile on the electron temperature and safety factor gradients as predicted by quasi-linear drift-turbulence transport theory. Experiments in FTU allow the extension of similar studies carried out on other tokamaks to plasmas with higher density and higher magnetic field. Magnetic shear and electron temperature gradients are found to drive opposite turbulent particle flows in the gradient region (0.3 < r/a ≤ 0.5), while inward thermo-diffusion alone is found in the plasma core (r/a ≤ 0.3). Density profiles at midradius appear to be controlled by a convective term proportional to the density and independent of the gradient of temperature and magnetic shear. A linear increase in density peaking versus effective collisionality is found, differing from the scaling observed in other FTU plasma regimes.