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Register a new userThe global build-up to intrinsic ELM bursts seen in divertor full flux loops in Jet
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A global signature of the build-up to an intrinsic ELM is found in the phase of signals measured in full flux azimuthal loops in the divertor region of JET. Full flux loop signals provide a global measurement proportional to the voltage induced by changes in poloidal magnetic flux; they are electromagnetically induced by the dynamics of spatially integrated current density. We perform direct time-domain analysis of the high time-resolution full flux loop signals VLD2 and VLD3. We analyze plasmas where a steady H-mode is sustained over several seconds, during which all the observed ELMs are intrinsic; there is no deliberate intent to pace the ELMing process by external means. ELM occurrence times are determined from the Be II emission at the divertor. We previously found that the occurrence times of intrinsic ELMs correlate with specific phases of the VLD2 and VLD3 signals. Here, we investigate how the VLD2 and VLD3 phases vary with time in advance of the ELM occurrence time. We identify a build-up to the ELM in which the VLD2 and VLD3 signals progressively align to the phase at which ELMs preferentially occur, on a ~ 2 -5ms timescale. At the same time, the VLD2 and VLD3 signals become phase synchronized with each other, consistent with the emergence of coherent global dynamics in the integrated current density. In a plasma that remains close to a global magnetic equilibrium, this can reflect bulk displacement or motion of the plasma. This build-up signature to an intrinsic ELM can be extracted from a time interval of data that does not extend beyond the ELM occurrence time, so that these full flux loop signals could assist in ELM prediction or mitigation.
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Pellet ELM triggering is a well established scheme for decreasing the time between two successive ELM crashes below its natural value. Reliable ELM pacing has been demonstrated experimentally in several devices increasing the ELM frequency considerably. However, it was also shown that the frequency cannot be increased arbitrarily due to a so-called lag-time. During this time after a preceding natural or triggered ELM crash, neither a natural ELM crash occurs nor the triggering of an ELM crash by pellet injection is possible. For this article, pellet ELM triggering simulations are advanced beyond previous studies in two ways. Firstly, realistic ExB and diamagnetic background flows are included. And secondly, the pellet is injected at different stages of the pedestal build-up. This allows to recover the lag-time for the first time in simulations and investigate it in detail. A series of non-linear extended MHD simulations is performed to investigate the plasma dynamics resulting from an injection at different time points during the pedestal build-up. The experimentally observed lag-time is qualitatively reproduced well. In particular, a sharp transition is observed between the regime where no ELMs can be triggered and the regime where pellet injection causes an ELM crash. Via variations of pellet parameters and injection time, the two regimes are studied and compared in detail revealing pronounced differences in the non-linear dynamics. The toroidal mode spectrum is significantly broader when an ELM crash is triggered enhancing the stochasticity and therefore also the losses of thermal energy along magnetic field lines. In the heat fluxes to the divertor targets, pronounced toroidal asymmetries are observed. In case of high injection velocities leading to deep penetration, also the excitation of core modes like the $2/1$ neoclassical tearing mode is observed.
The distribution of particles and power to plasma-facing components is of key importance in the design of next-generation fusion devices. Power and particle decay lengths have been measured in a number of MAST L-mode and H-mode discharges in order to determine their parametric dependencies, by fitting power and particle flux profiles measured by divertor Langmuir probes, to a convolution of an exponential decay and a Gaussian function. In all discharges analysed, it is found that exponential decay lengths mapped to the midplane are mostly dependent on separatrix electron density and plasma current (or parallel connection length). The widths of the convolved Gaussian functions have been used to derive an approximate diffusion coefficient, which is found to vary from 1m2/s to 7m2/s, and is systematically lower in H-mode compared with L-mode.
The free-streaming plus recycling model (FSRM) has recently been developed to understand and predict tungsten gross erosion rates from the divertor during edge localized modes (ELMs). In this work, the FSRM was tested against experimental measurements of W sputtering during ELMs, conducted via fast WI spectroscopy. Good agreement is observed using a variety of controlling techniques, including gas puffing, neutral beam heating, and plasma shaping to modify the pedestal stability boundary and thus the ELM behavior. ELM mitigation by pellet pacing was observed to strongly reduce W sputtering by flushing C impurities from the pedestal and reducing the divertor target electron temperature. No reduction of W sputtering was observed during the application of resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs), in contrast to the prediction of the FSRM. Potential sources of this discrepancy are discussed. Finally, the framework of the FSRM is utilized to predict intra-ELM W sputtering rates in ITER. It is concluded that W erosion during ELMs in ITER will be caused mainly by free-streaming fuel ions, but free-streaming seeded impurities (N or Ne) may increase the erosion rate significantly if present in the pedestal at even the 1% level. Impurity recycling is not expected to cause significant W erosion in ITER due to the very low target electron temperature.
The XGC1 edge gyrokinetic code is used for a high fidelity prediction for the width of the heat-flux to divertor plates in attached plasma condition. The simulation results are validated against the empirical scaling $lambda_q propto B_P^{-gamma}$ obtained from present tokamak devices, where $lambda_q$ is the divertor heat-flux width mapped to the outboard midplane and $gamma_q=1.19$ as defined by T. Eich et al. [Nucl. Fusion 53 (2013) 093031], and $B_P$ is the magnitude of the poloidal magnetic field at outboard midplane separatrix surface. This empirical scaling predicts $lambda_q leq 1mm$ when extrapolated to ITER, which would require operation with very high separatrix densities $(n_{sep}/n_{Greenwald} > 0.6)$ in the Q=10 scenario to achieve semi-detached plasma operation and high radiative fractions leading to acceptable divertor power fluxes. XGC1 predicts, however, that $lambda_q$ for ITER is over 5 mm, suggesting that operation in the ITER Q=10 scenario with acceptable divertor power loads could be obtained over a wider range of plasma separatrix densities and radiative fractions. The physics reason behind this difference is, according to the XGC1 results, that while the ion magnetic drift contribution to the divertor heat-flux width is wider in the present tokamaks, the turbulent electron contribution is wider in ITER. A high current C-Mod discharge is found to be in a mixed regime: While the heat-flux width by the ion neoclassical magnetic drift is still wider than the turbulent electron heat-flux width, the heat-flux magnitude is dominated by the narrower electron heat-flux.
Advanced divertor configurations modify the magnetic geometry of the diverter to achieve a combination of strong magnetic flux expansion, increased connection length and higher divertor volume - to improve detachment stability, neutral/impurity confinement and heat-channel broadening. In this paper, we discuss the modification of the Flux-Coordinate Independent (FCI) turbulence code GRILLIX to treat generalised magnetic geometry, to allow for the investigation of the effect of magnetic geometry on turbulent structures in the edge and SOL. The development of grids and parallel operators from numerically-defined magnetic equilibria is discussed, as is the application of boundary conditions via penalisation, with the finite-width method generalised to treat complex non-conformal boundaries. Initial testing of hyperbolic (advection) and parabolic (diffusion) test cases is presented for the Snowflake scenario.
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