Electron heat transport in shaped TCV L-mode plasmas

Electron heat transport experiments are performed in L-mode discharges at various plasma triangularities, using radially localized electron cyclotron heating to vary independently both the electron temperature T-e and the normalized electron temperature gradient R/L-Te over a large range. Local gyrofluid (GLF23) and global collisionless gyro-kinetic (LORB5) linear simulations show that, in the present experiments, trapped electron mode (TEM) is the most unstable mode. Experimentally, the electron heat diffusivity chi(e) is shown to decrease with increasing collisionality, and no dependence of chi(e) on R/L-Te is observed at high R/L-Te values. These two observations are consistent with the predictions of TEM simulations, which supports the fact that TEM plays a crucial role in electron heat transport. In addition, over the broad range of positive and negative triangularities investigated, the electron heat diffusivity is observed to decrease with decreasing plasma triangularity, leading to a strong increase of plasma confinement at negative triangularity.