Spatially resolved Hα-emission simulation with EIRENE in TJ-II to study hydrogen atomic and molecular physics in low density, high temperature fusion edge plasmas

Abstract

This paper is a continuation of previous studies (de la Cal et al 2007 J. Nucl. Mater. 363–365 764, de la Cal et al 2007 Proc. 34th EPS Conf. (Poland, Warsaw) P 2.029), where hydrogen recycling under ionizing plasma conditions was analysed by spatially resolved Hα-emission spectroscopy with a tangentially viewing camera looking at a poloidal limiter of the TJ-II stellarator operated with a low density, high temperature plasma edge (ne = (1–10) × 1012 cm−3 and Te = 40–400 eV). In this study, the first objective is to validate for hydrogen the recently implemented EIRENE codea www.eirene.de by comparing simulated Hα-emission chords with that obtained experimentally. The second objective is to analyse the atom and molecular neutral distributions in front of the limiter and at other plasma and chamber locations. The third one is to study the atomic and molecular reactions involved in the dissociation, ionization and excitation reactions, as calculated from the EIRENE code, in order to study hydrogen atomic and molecular physics in a low density, high temperature fusion plasma edge, with special focus on interpretation of Hα-emission. The contribution of the different reactions to the emission is analysed as a function of plasma radius. A relevant result obtained from EIRENE under this item is that the main precursor of the molecular Hα-emission is not H2 as proposed in many previous studies, but .