Overview of the FTU results | EPFL Graph Search

Since the 2016 IAEA Fusion Energy Conference, FTU operations have been mainly devoted to experiments on runaway electrons and investigations into a tin liquid limiter; other experiments have involved studies of elongated plasmas and dust. The tearing mode onset in the high density regime has been studied by means of the linear resistive code MARS, and the highly collisional regimes have been investigated. New diagnostics, such as a runaway electron imaging spectroscopy system for in-flight runaway studies and a triple Cherenkov probe for the measurement of escaping electrons, have been successfully installed and tested, and new capabilities of the collective Thomson scattering and the laser induced breakdown spectroscopy diagnostics have been explored.

Overview of ASDEX upgrade results

Timothy Goodman, Emanuele Poli, Olivier Sauter, Giovanni Tardini, Dávid Wágner, Hartmut Zohm

Recent results from the ASDEX Upgrade experimental campaigns 2001 and 2002 are presented. An improved understanding of energy and particle transport emerges in terms of a 'critical gradient' model for the temperature gradients. Coupling this to particle diffusion explains most of the observed behaviour of the density profiles, in particular, the finding that strong central heating reduces the tendency for density profile peaking. Internal transport barriers (ITBs) with electron and ion temperatures in excess of 20 keV (but not simultaneously) have been achieved. By shaping the plasma, a regime with small type 11 edge localized modes (ELMs) has been established. Here, the maximum power deposited on the target plates was greatly reduced at constant average power. Also, an increase of the ELM frequency by injection of shallow pellets was demonstrated., ELM free operation is possible in the quiescent H-mode regime previously found in DIII-D which has also been established on ASDEX Upgrade. Regarding stability, a regime with benign neoclassical tearing modes (NTMs) was found. During electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) stabilization of NTMs, beta(N) could be increased well above the usual onset level without a reappearance of the NTM. Electron cyclotron resonance heating and ECCD have also been used to control the sawtooth repetition frequency at a moderate fraction of the total heating power. The inner wall of the ASDEX Upgrade vessel has increasingly been covered with tungsten without causing detrimental effects on the plasma performance. Regarding scenario integration, a scenario with a large fraction of noninductively driven current (greater than or equal to50%), but without ITB has been established. It combines improved confinement (tau(E)/tau(ITER98) approximate to 1.2) and stability (beta(N) less than or equal to 3.5) at high Greenwald fraction (n(e)/n(GW) approximate to 0.85) in steady state and with type 11 ELMy edge and would offer the possibility for long pulses with high fusion power at reduced current in ITER.

2003

Turbulent ion heating in TCV tokamak plasmas

Christian Schlatter

The Tokamak à configuration variable (TCV) features the highest electron cyclotron wave power density available to resonantly heat (ECRH) the electrons and to drive noninductive currents in a fusion grade plasma (ECCD). In more than 15 years of exploitation, much effort has been expended on real and velocity space engineering of the plasma electron energy distribution function and thus making electron physics a major research contribution of TCV. When a plasma was first subjected to ECCD, a surprising energisation of the ions, perpendicular to the confining magnetic field, was observed on the charge exchange spectrum measured with the vertical neutral particle analyser (VNPA). It was soon concluded that the ion acceleration was not due to power equipartition between electrons and ions, which, due to the absence of direct ion heating on TCV, has thus far been considered as the only mechanism heating the ions. However, although observed for more than ten years, little attention was paid to this phenomenon, whose cause has remained unexplained to date. The key subject of this thesis is the experimental study of this anomalous ion acceleration, the characterisation in terms of relevant parameters and the presentation of a model simulation of the potential process responsible for the appearance of fast ions. The installation of a new compact neutral particle analyser (CNPA) with an extended high energy range (≤ 50 keV) greatly improved the fast ion properties diagnosis. The CNPA was commissioned and the information derived from its measurement (ion temperature and density, isotopic plasma composition) was validated against other ion diagnostics, namely the active carbon charge exchange recombination spectroscopy system (CXRS) and a neutron counter. In ohmic plasmas, where the ion heating agrees with classical theory, the radial ion temperature profile was successfully reconstructed by vertically displacing the plasma across the horizontal CNPA line of sight. Active charge exchange measurements, by doping the plasma with ion neutralisation targets injected with the diagnostic neutral beam (DNBI), were used to absolutely calibrate the NPA. Advanced modelling of the measured hydrogenic charge exchange spectra with the neutralisation and neutral transport codes KN1D and DOUBLE-TCV permitted a calculation of the absolute neutral density profiles of the plasma species. The energisation and the properties of fast ions were studied in dedicated, low density, cold ion, hot electron plasmas, resonantly heated at the second harmonic of the electron cyclotron frequency. The ion acceleration occurs on a characteristic timescale in the sub-millisecond range and comprises up to 20 % of the plasma ions. The number of fast ions nis and their effective temperature Tis are found to depend strongly on the bulk and suprathermal electron parameters, in particular Tis ≤ Teb (electron bulk) and nis ∼ Vde (toroidal electron drift speed). The suprathermal electrons, abundantly generated in plasmas subjected to ECCD, are diagnosed with perpendicular and oblique viewing electron cyclotron emission (ECE) antennas and the measured frequency spectra are reconstructed with the relativistic ECE radiation balance code NOTEC-TCV. With steady-state ECRH and ECCD, the fast ion population reaches an equilibrium state. The spatial fast ion temperature profile is broad, of similar shape compared to the bulk ion temperature profile. The hottest suprathermal temperature observed is Tis ≤ 6 keV. Various potential ion acceleration mechanisms were examined for relevance in the TCV parameter range. The simultaneous wave–electron and wave–ion resonances of ion acoustic turbulence (IAT) show the best correlation with the available experimental knowledge. Ion acoustic waves are emitted by the weakly relativistic circulating electrons and are mainly Landau damped onto the ions. Destabilisation of IAT is markedly facilitated by the important degree of nonisothermicity Te/Ti ≥ 40 of X2 EC heated TCV plasmas. Efforts were undertaken to consistently model the experimental observations using a numerical experiment. The relevant physics describing IAT was implemented in a finite difference code solving the quasilinear diffusion equation describing the time evolution of the electron and ion distribution functions. The simulations, fed as far as possible with experimentally available information, confirm the growth and saturation of IAT. Electrons and ions are initially preferentially heated in the toroidal direction. As the ions gain energy, the ion waves are damped more efficiently and only modes propagating at oblique angles can still grow, thus accelerating ions into the radial perpendicular direction. The simulation shows that turbulence reaches a steady-state when the ions are sufficiently hot to permanently stabilise IAT. The parameters describing the tail of the modelled equilibrium ion distribution agree quantitatively well with the CNPA measurement. Preliminary studies investigated on the interaction of fast ions with the sawtooth instability. It is found that the fast ion population in sawtoothing plasmas is transiently enforced with each sawtooth collapse. It is presently thought that the toroidal electric reconnection field lowers the IAT stability threshold thus producing more suprathermal ions.

EPFL2009

High Density Plasma Heating in the Tokamak à Configuration Variable

Loïc Curchod

The Tokamak à Configuration Variable (TCV) is a medium size magnetic confinement thermonuclear fusion experiment designed for the study of the plasma performances as a function of its shape. It is equipped with a high power and highly flexible electron cyclotron heating (ECH) and current drive (ECCD) system. Up to 3 MW of 2nd harmonic EC power in ordinary (O2) or extraordinary (X2) polarization can be injected from TCV low-field side via six independently steerable launchers. In addition, up to 1:5 MW of 3rd harmonic EC power (X3) can be launched along the EC resonance from the top of TCV vacuum vessel. At high density, standard ECH and ECCD are prevented by the appearance of a cutoff layer screening the access to the EC resonance at the plasma center. As a consequence, less than 50% of TCV density operational domain is accessible to X2 and X3 ECH. The electron Bernstein waves (EBW) have been proposed to overcome this limitation. EBW is an electrostatic mode propagating beyond the plasma cutoff without upper density limit. Since it cannot propagate in vacuum, it has to be excited by mode conversion of EC waves in the plasma. Efficient electron Bernstein waves heating (EBH) and current drive (EBCD) were previously performed in several fusion devices, in particular in the W7-AS stellarator and in the MAST spherical tokamak. In TCV, the conditions for an efficient O-X-B mode conversion (i.e. a steep density gradient at the O2 plasma cutoff) are met at the edge of high confinement (H-mode) plasmas characterized by the appearance of a pedestal in the electron temperature and density profiles. TCV experiments have demonstrated the first EBW coupling to overdense plasmas in a medium aspect-ratio tokamak via O-X-B mode conversion. This thesis work focuses on several aspects of ECH and EBH in low and high density plasmas. Firstly, the experimental optimum angle for the O-X-B mode conversion is successfully compared to the full-wave mode conversion calculation of the AMR code. The implementation of TCV ECH system geometry in AMR and the coupling of AMR to the LUKE quasi-linear Fokker-Planck solver for the TCV environment were part of this work. The power deposition location of modulated EBH is then detected inside the O2 plasma cutoff by oscillation analysis of the soft X-ray emission profile using the break-in-slope (BIS) analysis and a harmonic response identification method (HRIM), which is the demonstration of resonant EBH in TCV. The BIS and HRIM methods are also used to successfully detect and track the time-varying deposition locations of one and then two X2 power beams simultaneously. All experimental results are in good agreement within 10% of the normalized plasma radius with numerical results of the AMR and C3PO ray-tracing codes coupled to LUKE. The global power absorption coefficient of modulated ECH (MECH) is studied by HRIM analysis of the plasma toroidal flux response measured by TCV diamagnetic loop (DML). Analysis of earlier X3 MECH and new X2 MECH experiments reveals a major perturbation of the method by the sawtooth magnetohydrodynamic activity in the plasma center. Indeed, an asymmetric improvement of the X3 power absorption (up to 100%) with respect to the sign of the X2 ECCD pre-heating was observed in previous TCV experiments and remained unexplained by Fokker-Planck simulations until now. The present work allows to attribute this asymmetry to a sawtooth activity strongly destabilized by the central X2 co-ECCD locking to the X3 power modulation. The performances of EBW current drive (EBCD) in TCV are studied with the AMR-LUKE codes for several poloidal positions of the EBW injection. The maximum EBCD efficiency is obtained when the EBW are injected close the plasma midplane such that the wave parallel refractive index upshift is moderate and the absorption takes place at the plasma center where the electron temperature is the highest. However, the absolute driven current remains small (i.e. ≲1% of the Ohmic current). Finally, a new loop-antenna for the detection of the lower-hybrid (LH) waves generated by a parametric instability (PI) at the X-B mode conversion was designed, built and installed in TCV torus. Fast monitoring of the LHPI spectrum allows to show for the first time the correlation of the amplitude of the detected waves with the local LHPI threshold power at the mode conversion region, estimated from the experimental profiles data. In an EBW power scan, the LHPI threshold power is estimated to be ≲50 kW in good agreement with the value predicted from the experimental profiles data. The LHPI energy cascade from the low to the high LH frequency bands with increasing EBH power is shown for the first time in TCV.

EPFL2011