Transition from MAR to EIR of deuterium plasma detachment in NAGDIS-II

Abstract

Volumetric plasma recombination in a detached deuterium (D) plasma was experimentally studied in the linear plasma device NAGDIS-II. The radial distributions of the electron temperature (T e ) and the electron density (n e ) were measured by upstream and downstream laser Thomson scattering (LTS) systems and D-atom excited states of the Balmer series (n = 3–7) were measured by optical emission spectroscopy (OES). The results indicated that the electron static pressure, particle flux and heat flux present a two-step reduction with an increasing neutral pressure, suggesting that molecule activated recombination (MAR) and electron–ion recombination (EIR) were activated, respectively. The difference in the distributions of the atomic state population densities was observed to be a feature of the transition from the MAR-dominant phase to the EIR-dominant phase. The transition between the two phases had a distinct boundary at T e ∼0.7 eV, which was considered a transition point between the phases. The ratios of the atomic state population densities showed different features in the two phases, and are expected to be useful in characterizing the phase and degree of plasma detachment.