Gas Puff Rate Research Articles

Validation of prediction capability of operating space for plasma initiation in MAST-U

Abstract DYON is a plasma initiation modelling code that solves the differential equation system of the full circuit equations (plasma current, active coil currents and eddy currents in full passive structures) and 0D global energy and particle balance equations[1]. In order to test the capability of the full electromagnetic plasma initiation model to predict individual discharges in experiments and thus the operating space in the device, a dedicated experimental database was built in MAST-U by scanning the prefilled gas pressure p0 and the induced loop voltage Vloop . In the experimental operating space of p0 and Vloop the lower and the upper limits of p0 are determined by the plasma breakdown failure and the plasma burn-through failure, respectively. The lower limit of Vloop is determined by the plasma burn-through failure. By directly reading the control room data used in each discharge (i.e. currents in the solenoid, poloidal field coils, and toroidal field coils, p0 , and gas puffing rate), the full electromagnetic DYON consistently predicted the failed breakdown, failed burn-through, and successful plasma initiation discharges in the experimental database, demonstrating its capability to predict the operating space for inductive plasma initiation. The Paschen curve calculated with the effective connection length in MAST-U indicates a much higher p0 required for plasma breakdown than the experimental data, indicating that individual field line evaluation is necessary to calculate the quantitative requirements for Townsend breakdown. The demonstration in this paper shows that the full electromagnetic DYON could be a useful simulation tool to assess the feasibility of inductive plasma initiation and to optimise operating scenarios in future devices. [1] Hyun-Tae Kim 2022 Nuclear Fusion 62 126012

SOLPS-ITER numerical evaluation about the effect of drifts in a divertor configuration of ASDEX-Upgrade and a limiter configuration of J-TEXT

We performed SOLPS-ITER numerical simulation on the J-TEXT limiter tokamak with the activation of drifts. The simulation results are compared with ASDEX Upgrade divertor simulation results to evaluate the effect of drifts. Through a gas puffing rate scan, both attached and detached regimes were numerically obtained in the AUG divertor and J-TEXT limiter. The key plasma parameters in the J-TEXT limiter are evaluated with and without drifts that have a qualitative performance like AUG except the roll-over of the total ion flux at the targets. The drift effects on the target profiles are investigated for the maximum electron temperature of 15 eV and 5 eV at the outer targets for both devices. When the outer targets are attached in the J-TEXT limiter and AUG divertor, the drifts result in the partial detachment of the inner targets. In the detached regimes, the drifts decrease the electron temperature on AUG divertor targets. However, for the J-TEXT limiter, the electron temperature only decreases at the far SOL region at the inner target. The effect of drifts on the neutral density is also presented.

Addressing the carbon and nitrogen impurity screening issue on HL-2M snowflake minus and conventional divertor using SOLPS

This paper demonstrates the benefits of the HL-2M SF (snowflake) minus divertor on power exhaust and impurity screening compared with the LSN (lower single null) conventional divertor using SOLPS 5.0 code package. In order to estimate the effectiveness of the impurity screening capability in the HL-2M SF minus divertor, we analyze the impurity transport behavior with intrinsic carbon impurities (P sol = 4 MW) and external injected nitrogen impurities (P sol = 6 MW) in the LSN and SF minus divertors. The simulation results reveal that an input power of and electron density of on the outer mid-plane can induce a nearly 80% pressure drop in the SOL (scrape-off layer) flux tube, representing the transition of the detachment regime in the SF minus divertor. For the higher power operation with P sol = 6 MW, a nitrogen gas puffing rate at is sufficient to exhaust excessive energy and facilitate detachment in the SF minus divertor. However, a higher gas puffing rate is necessary for the LSN divertor, indicating an improved power exhaust capability in the SF minus divertor. Furthermore, the maximum effective charge () in the SF minus divertor SOL region is nearly 1.45 versus 3.5 in the LSN case with P sol = 4 MW. The maximum in the SF minus divertor SOL region is below 2.4, versus 5.5 in the LSN case with the same impurity gas puffing rate when . Moreover, the impurity ions accumulate in the divertor region in the SF minus case, which demonstrates the effectiveness of the impurity screening capability in the HL-2M SF minus divertor. We find that the higher ionized state impurity ions contribute to the increase of and determine the impurity level upstream. On the one hand, the detached divertor regime has the benefit of suppressing the impurity particles ionizing to a higher ionized state. On the other hand, the ionization rate distribution and the poloidal velocity influenced by the friction and thermal forces determine the impurity transport behavior.

Parametric study of midplane gas puffing to maximize ICRF power coupling in ITER

Midplane gas puffing close to the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) antennae has been demonstrated to be robust in improving ICRF power coupling in current tokamaks. It is also shown in a previous study (Zhang 2019 Nucl. Mater. Energy 19 364–71) that in ITER, midplane gas puffing with a puff rate of ∼4.5 × 1022 electrons s−1 can increase the antenna loading/coupling resistance by about a factor of two. In this paper, a comprehensive parametric study has been carried out to characterize the influence of midplane gas puffing on ICRF power coupling in additional and broader range of parameter scans. The new parameter scans include the gas puff rate, the poloidal location of the gas pipe orifices (GPOs), the separatrix density, the particle perpendicular diffusion coefficient, the radial distance between the plasma and antenna as well as the antenna phasing. The 3D edge plasma fluid and neutral transport code EMC3-EIRENE code has been used to simulate the 3D distributions of plasma density in the presence of gas puffing, which are then used in the antenna code ANTITER II to calculate the antenna coupling. The simulation results indicate that the ITER ICRF local midplane gas injection layout (with the GPOs located on one side of each antenna port) increases the ICRF power coupling significantly in all studied plasma scenarios and antenna parameters. We are hence confident that the chosen layout for the ICRF local gas injection on ITER is appropriate. We are also confident that the ITER local gas injection will allow boosting the ICRF coupling with all studied plasma conditions and antenna phasings.

Numerical modelling of the impact of leakage under divertor baffle in WEST

In WEST experimental campaign C5, the divertor pumping capability has been improved by sealing the space between the divertor outer baffle and the vacuum vessel. It is expected that the degree of baffle leakage influences the transport of neutral particles inside the main chamber, which affects the detachment onset. Knowing the exact impacts of leakage and understanding the physical processes behind it are helpful for the study and control of plasma detachment. We investigate the impact of leakage by performing transport simulations through SOLEDGE-EIRENE code considering several cases with different leakage levels. Starting from the basic simulation case, non-constant radial transport coefficients obtained by the feedback control method are applied to achieve a better match with the experimental one (#54903) in L-mode. Based on the basic case, the evolution of plasma regimes from sheath limited regime to detached one in different wall geometries has been studied by ramping the upstream density. The numerical results show that the cases with closed or reduced leakage under the baffle have better performance in trapping the neutral particles and higher neutral pressure near the baffle. The neutral compression ratio is increased by a factor up to 4, leading to more significant momentum and power dissipation in the divertor, thus lowering the detachment threshold in n e,sep by up to 16%. At the same time, a much higher gas puff rate by a factor up to 22 is needed to maintain an equivalent n e,sep level in the case without or reduced leakage. For all the cases here, there exist characteristic parameters on which the baffle closure has no obvious influence on their value when plasma starts to detach. The evolution of radiator height as a function of target temperature shows no sensitivity to the leakage, which gives some insight into the stable detachment control strategy in the future. Finally, simulation results are compared with available neutral pressure measurements from WEST campaigns to verify the predictions from the simulation. • The impact of wall geometry (characterized by different sizes of leakage under the divertor baffle) on detachment properties in WEST is investigated using SOLEDGE-EIRENE transport code. • Radial non-constant transport coefficients obtained by the feedback control method are applied in the simulation, allowing a better match with experimental results in L-mode. • The case with less leakage has better performance in trapping the neutral particles and has higher neutral pressure near the target, leading to greater power dissipation in the divertor, thus decreasing the detachment threshold in upstream separatrix density. • The evolution of the radiation front and the sensitivity of the detachment process to multiple parameters under the influence of leakage have been investigated. • Simulation results are compared with available neutral pressure measurements from WEST campaigns to verify the predictions from the simulation with respect to the impact of leakage.

Conceptual design and optimization of an ITER-type ICRF antenna on CFETR

The Chinese Fusion Engineering Testing Reactor (CFETR) plans to use an ITER-type antenna and couple ∼30 MW ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) power to the plasma. In this paper, the physical design of a CFETR antenna in the midplane port is carried out. Parameter scans were performed to study the optimized toroidal and poloidal numbers of straps as well as the optimized geometric sizes of the straps. The coupling resistance, power spectrum, maximum voltage in the resonant transmission line of the strap and parallel electric field in the antenna vicinity are used to determine the performance of the studied antennas. It is shown that four poloidal substraps (i.e. quadruplets) and six toroidal strap columns arranged in half of the antenna allows the antenna to have the best coupling capability. To improve the coupling capability of the proposed antenna model, local gas puffing methods, as well as various antenna phasings, are studied. It is indicated that the coupling resistance can be increased by a factor of three for all studied antenna phasings when applying the midplane gas puffing with a gas puff rate in the order of 4 × 1023 el s-1. The toroidal phasings suitable for heating include (0, pi, 0, pi, 0, pi) and (0, pi, pi, 0, 0, pi).

Core-edge 2D fluid modeling of full tokamak discharge with varying magnetic equilibrium: from WEST start-up to ramp-down

In the present work we investigate for the first time the 2D fluid transport of the plasma in WEST during an entire discharge from the start-up to the ramp-down (shot #54487). The evolution of density profile, electron and ion temperatures together with the experimental magnetic equilibrium, total current and gas-puff rate is investigated. Comparisons with the interferometry diagnostic show a remarkable overall qualitative agreement during the discharge that can be quantitative at some locations in the plasma core. If at the onset of the X-points during the ramp-up the electron heat flux is dominant at the target, present results show that the ion heat flux becomes dominant during the stationary phase of the discharge. Using a simple model for erosion, present results assess the tungsten sputtering due to deuterium ions during the start-up and ramp-up phases of the discharge and confirm the need to consider full discharge simulation to accurately treat the W source of contamination. This work also demonstrates the interest of developing magnetic equilibrium free solver including efficient time integration to step toward predictive capabilities in the future for fusion operation.

Prediction of DIII-D Pedestal Structure From Externally Controllable Parameters

The sharp increase of pressure at the edge of a high confinement mode (H-mode) plasma, the pedestal, strongly impacts overall plasma performance. Predicting the pedestal is a necessity to control and optimize tokamak operations. An experimental data-driven machine learning (ML) approach is presented, which predicts the pedestal heights and widths of electron density ( $n_{\mathrm {e}}$ ) and electron temperature ( $T_{\mathrm {e}}$ ) profiles as well as the separatrix $n_{\mathrm {e}}$ from externally controllable parameters such as the plasma shape, heating method and power, and gas puff rate and integrated gas puff. The one modeling framework for integrated tasks (OMFIT) framework was used with DIII-D data to efficiently, robustly, and automatically build a database of pedestal parameters to train ML models. Database creation was enabled by the search engine tool for DIII-D data, TokSearch, which parallelizes data fetching, enabling fast searches through basic signals of thousands of DIII-D shots and selection of relevant time intervals. Principal component analysis (PCA) separated the database into three clusters that represent classes of plasma shapes that are regularly used in DIII-D. The most important parameters for setting the pedestal structure were plasma current ( $I_{\mathrm {p}}$ ), toroidal magnetic field ( $B_{\phi }$ ), neutral beam heating power ( $P_{{\mathrm {NBI}}}$ ), and shaping quantities. The deep jointly informed neural networks (DJINNs) algorithm was applied to identify suitable neural network (NN) architectures that appropriately capture the features of the pedestal database. Separate NNs were implemented for each pedestal parameter, and ensembling methods were used to improve the prediction accuracy and allowed estimation of the prediction uncertainty. The pedestal predictions of the test dataset lie within the measurement uncertainties of the pedestal parameters. The NN outperformed simple linear regression (LR) analysis, indicating nonlinear dependencies in the pedestal structure. The presented achievements illustrate a promising path for future research, using feature extraction to infer experimental trends and thereby improve pedestal models as well as deploying NN for a fast pedestal prediction in DIII-D scenario development.

Impact of divertor configuration on recycling neutral fluxes for ITER-like wall in JET H-mode plasmas

In recent years it has been well known that in JET, with the ITER-like wall, the performance of high-power H-mode plasmas depends strongly on the magnetic topology of the divertor. This is generally attributed to the effect of the magnetic field shaping on the neutral flux transport and pumping, which—in high density H-mode plasmas—determine the pedestal properties and the global confinement. In this work we have analysed the spatial distribution and the dynamic behaviour of the Dα-emission for different magnetic configurations. Experimental observations indicate that for certain configurations, the surface temperature and the Dα—emission anomalously increase on top of the inner divertor, which points to thermal outgassing there. This is also the region where most beryllium co-deposits accumulate and most deuterium becomes trapped. The overheating at this region far from the strike point (SP) is observed to happen in magnetic configurations with reduced distance between the divertor material surface and the separatrix (clearance). The neutral flux that appears at the upper inner divertor during a few milliseconds after the ELM-crash, is more than an order of magnitude larger than the gas puffing rate and dominates over all other regions. Finally, a preliminary study describes how this thermal fuel outgassing from the co-deposited layers could be used intentionally as a wall-conditioning in JET technique with plasmas that focus their particle and heat flux there. This could be used as a complementary wall isotope control technique and more specifically for tritium recovery from the upper inner divertor where most fuel-trapping beryllium co-deposits accumulate in JET ITER-like wall.

EDGE2D-EIRENE simulations of the influence of isotope effects and anomalous transport coefficients on near scrape-off layer radial electric field

EDGE2D-EIRENE (the ‘code’) simulations show that radial electric field, Er, in the near scrape-off layer (SOL) of tokamaks can have large variations leading to a strong local E × B shear greatly exceeding that in the core region. This was pointed out in simulations of JET plasmas with varying divertor geometry, where the magnetic configuration with larger predicted near SOL Er was found to have lower H-mode power threshold, suggesting that turbulence suppression in the SOL by local E × B shear can be a player in the L–H transition physics (Delabie et al 2015 42nd EPS Conf. on Plasma Physics (Lisbon, Portugal, 22–26 June 2015) paper O3.113 (http://ocs.ciemat.es/EPS2015PAP/pdf/O3.113.pdf), Chankin et al 2017 Nucl. Mater. Energy 12 273). Further code modeling of JET plasmas by changing hydrogen isotopes (H–D–T) showed that the magnitude of the near SOL Er is lower in H cases in which the H-mode threshold power is higher (Chankin et al 2017 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 59 045012). From the experiment it is also known that hydrogen plasmas have poorer particle and energy confinement than deuterium plasmas, consistent with the code simulation results showing larger particle diffusion coefficients at the plasma edge, including SOL, in hydrogen plasmas (Maggi et al 2018 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion 60 014045). All these experimental observations and code results support the hypothesis that the near SOL E × B shear can have an impact on the plasma confinement. The present work analyzes neutral ionization patterns of JET plasmas with different hydrogen isotopes in L-mode cases with fixed input power and gas puffing rate, and its impact on target electron temperature, Te, and SOL Er. The possibility of a self-feeding mechanism for the increase in the SOL Er via the interplay between poloidal E × B drift and target Te is discussed. It is also shown that reducing anomalous turbulent transport coefficients, particle diffusion and electron and ion heat conductivities, leads to higher peak target Te and larger Er, suggesting the possibility of a positive feedback loop, under an implicitly made assumption that the E × B shear in the SOL is capable of suppressing turbulence.

Scrape-off layer density tailoring with local gas puffing to maximize ICRF power coupling in ITER

The coupling of ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) power to the plasma depends critically on the scrape-off layer (SOL) density since the fast wave is evanescent below the cut-off density. The ICRF power coupling can be improved by increasing the SOL density locally in front of the antenna by means of local gas puffing/fueling. To understand the influence of local gas puffing on the SOL and ICRF coupling and to find the optimized gas valve positions to maximize ICRF coupling in ITER, the 3D SOL code EMC3-EIRENE is used to calculate the SOL density, and the ICRF antenna codes ANTITER and FELICE are then used to calculate the coupling resistances. Purely deuterium plasma is simulated and the total gas puff rate for all studied cases is 4.5e22 el/s. The divertor gas puffing case is considered as the reference case. The density and temperature profiles in the reference case are well fitted to the standard ITER profiles (both for the low and medium density) with proper transport parameter profiles. The gas source is then switched to other local positions of the main chamber while all other simulation parameters are kept the same. The simulation results indicate that midplane gas puffing increases the antenna coupling resistance most significantly (by 150%-200%) for both ICRF antennas. This increase is at the same level as long as the gas valve is located toroidally close to the antenna, no matter if the gas valve is right to or left to the antenna. Outer top gas puffing increases the coupling resistance less significantly (by 100%–150%) for the antenna with good magnetic field line connections to the gas valve, but the increase is at a much smaller level (by ∼30%–60%) for the other antenna with only partial field line connections to the valve. The simulations thus confirm for ITER a behavior similar as seen experimentally in current devices and strongly suggest that ITER should modify the existing main chamber injection configuration to bring one of the four planned injection points closer to the antennas.

EMC3-EIRENE modeling of edge plasma to improve the ICRF coupling with local gas puffing in DEMO

We report the first 3D EMC3-EIRENE simulations of scrape-off layer (SOL) plasma in DEMO. EMC3-EIRENE is a 3D edge plasma fluid and neutral particle transport code. Effects of local gas puffing on the SOL density and ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) power coupling have been studied. A pure deuterium plasma is simulated and the puffing/fueling gas is deuterium gas. The gas puffing cases investigated include divertor, top, midplane and antenna gas puffing. The ICRF antenna is distributed through 360° toroidally, and poloidally located in the outer top of the vessel. The results show that toroidally distributed but poloidally localized antenna gas puffing increases the density in front of the antenna most significantly, while top or midplane gas puffing increases this antenna density to a moderate level. Influences of gas puff rate and particle transport parameters on the SOL density are investigated. The parameter scans indicate that the shift of the fast wave cut-off density position to the antenna depends almost linearly on the total gas puff rate. To achieve a significant antenna density increase, the antenna gas puff rate should be at the level of 1.8 × 1023 el s−1 (i.e. 1.0 × 1022 el s−1 per tokamak segment). As the total gas puff rate increases to 4.0 × 1023 el s−1, the evanescent layer of the fast wave (with = 2 m−1) almost vanishes. Moreover, it is found that antenna gas puffing reduces the local power flux to the main chamber wall near the gas valve due to a local decrease of the SOL temperature.

Effects of divertor geometry on H-mode pedestal structure in attached and detached plasmas in the DIII-D tokamak

Dedicated experiments have been performed in the DIII-D tokamak to assess the influence of divertor geometry on the H-mode pedestal structure. It has been found that in both attached and detached plasmas, compared to the open divertor, the more closed divertor results in lower density at the pedestal top. Higher pedestal performance can be achieved with the closed divertor in detached plasmas, as manifested by a higher pedestal temperature at the same pedestal density, by about a factor of two, than the open divertor. In addition, approaching divertor detachment by increasing the gas-puffing rate, for different divertor geometries, the pedestal width exhibits different trends. In the attached plasma, the pedestal width agrees well with the theoretical and empirical pedestal-poloidal-beta scaling. However, during divertor detachment, in the open divertor the pedestal width is significantly reduced. In contrast, for detached plasmas with the more closed divertor, the pedestal is significantly wider, by up to 50%, compared to the theoretical scaling. Moreover, near divertor detachment, the open diverted plasma exhibits a more aligned density and temperature pedestal profile, while in the closed divertor the detachment results in a relative shift (up to 50% of the pedestal width) between the density and temperature pedestal profiles.

Simulation of the gas puffing fueling on the HL-2A tokamak using SOLPS

Plasma fueling by gas puffing on HL-2A tokamak is studied by using the SOLPS code package. The injected molecular D2 is simulated by the kinetic neutral transport code Eirene and the plasma is modeled by the multi-fluid plasma transport code B2.5. By adjusting the radial transport coefficients D⊥ and χ⊥, the HL-2A experimental upstream plasma is well reproduced, which is taken as the initial state before gas puffing. The plasma and neutral evolution during the gas puffing and its impact on the divertor plasma are studied. It is found that the D2 can only penetrate into a very shallow region, however, the atomic D produced mainly by the dissociation can enhance the neutral D penetration depth, thus fuels the core plasma. Moreover, the impact of the gas puffing rate on the plasma is presented and discussed.

Parameter dependences of the separatrix density in nitrogen seeded ASDEX Upgrade H-mode discharges

The upstream separatrix electron density is an important interface parameter for core performance and divertor power exhaust. It has been measured in ASDEX Upgrade H-mode discharges by means of Thomson scattering using a self-consistent estimate of the upstream electron temperature under the assumption of Spitzer–Härm electron conduction. Its dependence on various plasma parameters has been tested for different plasma conditions in H-mode. The leading parameter determining ne,sep was found to be the neutral divertor pressure, which can be considered as an engineering parameter since it is determined mainly by the gas puff rate and the pumping speed. The experimentally found parameter dependence of ne,sep, which is dominated by the divertor neutral pressure, could be approximately reconciled by 2-point modelling.

Can gas puff be used for cleaning of the diagnostic first mirrors in ITER?

Erosion from the first mirrors of optical diagnostics can be enhanced by injecting neutral particles into plasma in the vicinity of the diagnostic entrance aperture. In the present paper feasibility of this method for cleaning from deposits is investigated numerically for conditions of the ITER main chamber diagnostics. Besides erosion on the mirror the local gas puff also increases fluxes of impurities due to sputtering from the neighboring surfaces. Calculations have shown that for external impurities coming from the main chamber (Be) the enhancement of erosion – cleaning effect – by far exceeds the extra deposition. However, two further problems have been revealed which may prevent practical use of the proposed technique. First, the gas puffing rate required for effective cleaning may be too large. Second is the contamination by “internal impurities” – sputtered material of the channels where the mirrors are installed.

Physics design study of the divertor power handling in 8 m class DEMO reactor

The divertor plasma performance and the power handling are studied for 8m class DEMO reactor with the fusion power of 1.5GW. Due to the high impurity radiation power (80% of the exhausted power), the full detachment at the inner target and the partial detachment at the outer target are obtained for a relatively low electron density of 1.8×1019m−3 at the outer mid-plane separatrix. The SONIC simulation shows the target heat load less than 8MW/m2, which can be handled by the ITER-like divertor target, for both target. However, at the outer target, the ion temperature is still high which may cause the target erosion. For the divertor power handling and suppression of the target erosion, the divertor design study have to be further proceeded as well as the core plasma design. Dependence of the mid-plane separatrix density and the impurity concentration on the fuel gas puff is also studied. With increasing fuel gas puff rate, the mid-plane separatrix density increases and the Ar impurity concentration at the outer mid-plane decreases to 0.5%.

Modelling the Ohmic L-mode ramp-down phase of JET hybrid pulses using JETTO with Bohm–gyro-Bohm transport

The empirical Bohm–gyro-Bohm (BgB) transport model implemented in the JETTO code is used to predictively simulate the purely Ohmic (OH), L-mode current-ramp-down phase of three JET hybrid pulses, which combine two different ramp rates with two different electron densities (at the beginning of the ramp). The modelling is discussed, namely the strategy to reduce as much as possible the number of free parameters used to benchmark the model predictions against the experimental results. Hence, keeping the gas puffing rate as measured whilst controlling the line-averaged electron density via the recycling coefficient (which in the modelling is taken at the separatrix instead of the wall), one of the many possible ways to fix the total particle source, it is shown that the BgB model reproduces well the experimental data, as far as both average quantities (plasma internal inductance and volume-averaged electron temperature) and profiles (electron density and temperature) are concerned, with relative errors remaining mostly below . The sensitivenesses with respect to the recycling coefficient, the ion effective charge, the energy of neutrals entering the plasma through the separatrix and the need to introduce a particle pinch are assessed; the necessity for a proper sawtooth model if experimental results are to be reproduced is also shown. The strong non-linear coupling in a OH plasma between density, temperature and current (essentially via interplay between the power-balance equation, Joule’s heating with a temperature-dependent resistivity and the dependence of BgB transport coefficients on profile gradients) is put in evidence and analyzed in light of modelling results. It is still inferred from the modelling that the real value of the recycling coefficient at the separatrix (basically, the so-called fuelling efficiency times the actual recycling coefficient at the wall) must become close to one in the final stages of the discharges, when the gas puffing is switched off and so recycling comes to be the only source of particles. If the wall recycling remains close to one (as standard for tokamaks), this may indicate that the fuelling efficiency also approaches unity, apparently consistent with the observed fact that the plasma is pushed towards the machine wall at the end of the current ramps.

3D simulations of gas puff effects on edge density and ICRF coupling in ASDEX Upgrade

In recent experiments, a local gas puff was found to be an effective way to tailor the scrape-off layer (SOL) density and improve the ion cyclotron range of frequency (ICRF) power coupling in tokamaks. In order to quantitatively reproduce these experiments, to understand the corresponding physics and to optimize the gas valve positions and rates, simulations were carried out with the 3D edge plasma transport code EMC3-EIRENE in ASDEX Upgrade. An inter-ELM phase of an H-mode discharge with a moderate gas puff rate (1.2 × 1022 electrons s−1) is used in our simulations. We simulated cases with gas puff in the lower divertor, the outer mid-plane and the top of the machine while keeping other conditions the same. Compared with the lower divertor gas puff, the outer mid-plane gas puff can increase the local density in front of the antennas most effectively, while a toroidally uniform but significantly smaller enhancement is found for the top gas puff. Good agreement between our simulations and experiments is obtained. With further simulations, the mechanisms of SOL density tailoring via local gas puffing and the strategies of gas puff optimization are discussed in the paper.

Identifying low-dimensional dynamics in type-I edge-localised-mode processes in JET plasmas

Edge localised mode (ELM) measurements from reproducibly similar plasmas in the Joint European Torus (JET) tokamak, which differ only in their gas puffing rate, are analysed in terms of the pattern in the sequence of inter-ELM time intervals. It is found that the category of ELM defined empirically as type I—typically more regular, less frequent, and having larger amplitude than other ELM types—embraces substantially different ELMing processes. By quantifying the structure in the sequence of inter-ELM time intervals using delay time plots, we reveal transitions between distinct phase space dynamics, implying transitions between distinct underlying physical processes. The control parameter for these transitions between these different ELMing processes is the gas puffing rate.