No Arabic abstract
The sputtering of inside wall components of tokamaks can lead to the injection of supersaturated vapour in the plasma edge. The resulting condensation favours the formation of clusters which can give rise to solid particulates by further accretion. Sputtering discharges are proposed to have highlight on the formation of carbonaceous dust observed in the tokamaks with graphite based wall components. The flux of the sputtered carbon atoms is evaluated in the conditions of our laboratory discharges as well as the evolution of their energy distribution. It is shown that a cooling mechanism occurs through collisions with the discharge argon atoms, leading to a nucleation phase. A comparison between the carbon structure of the resulting dust particles and a dust sample collected in the Tore Supra tokamak is proposed. The structural differences are discussed and can be correlated to specific plasma conditions.
We consider two inverse problems related to the tokamak textsl{Tore Supra} through the study of the magnetostatic equation for the poloidal flux. The first one deals with the Cauchy issue of recovering in a two dimensional annular domain boundary magnetic values on the inner boundary, namely the limiter, from available overdetermined data on the outer boundary. Using tools from complex analysis and properties of genereralized Hardy spaces, we establish stability and existence properties. Secondly the inverse problem of recovering the shape of the plasma is addressed thank tools of shape optimization. Again results about existence and optimality are provided. They give rise to a fast algorithm of identification which is applied to several numerical simulations computing good results either for the classical harmonic case or for the data coming from textsl{Tore Supra}.
Regular oscillations of the central electron temperature have been observed by means of ECE and SXR diagnostics during non-inductively driven discharges on Tore Supra. These oscillations are sustained by LHCD, do not have a helical structure and, therefore, cannot be ascribed as MHD phenomena. The most probable explanation of this oscillating regime (O-regime) is the assumption that the plasma current density (and, thus, the q-profile) and the electron temperature evolve as a non-linearly coupled predator-pray system. The integrated modelling code CRONOS has been used to demonstrate that the coupled heat transport and resistive diffusion equations admit solutions for the electron temperature and the current density which have a cyclic behaviour. Recent experimental results in which the O-regime co-exists with MHD modes will be presented. Because both phenomena are linked to details of the q-profile, some interplay between MHD and oscillations may occur. The localisation of magnetic islands allows to obtain an accurate picture of the q-profile in the plasma core. In some case, MHD-driven reconnection helps in maintaining a weakly inverted q-profile that is found to be, in the CRONOS simulations, a necessary condition to trigger the oscillations.
The paper provides a tutorial to the conceptual layout of a self-consistently coupled Particle-In-Cell/Test-Particle model for the kinetic simulation of sputtering transport in capacitively coupled plasmas at low gas pressures. It explains when a kinetic approach is actually needed and which numerical concepts allow for the inherent nonequilibrium behavior of the charged and neutral particles. At the example of a generic sputtering discharge both the fundamentals of the applied Monte Carlo methods as well as the conceptual details in the context of the sputtering scenario are elaborated on. Finally, two in the context of sputtering transport simulations often exploited assumptions, namely on the energy distribution of impinging ions as well as on the test particle approach, are validated for the proposed example discharge.
An analytical model previously developed to study the structure of the magnetic field for the TEXTOR-DED [S.S. Abdullaev et al. Phys. Plasmas, 6, 153 (1999)] is applied to the similar study of the Ergodic Divertor of Tore Supra tokamak [Ph. Ghendrih, Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, 38, 1653 (1996)]. The coil configuration of ED Tore Supra consists of six modules equidistantly located along the toroidal direction on the low-field-side of the torus with given toroidal and poloidal extensions. The Hamiltonian formulation of field line equations in straight-field-line coordinates (Boozer coordinates) and the computationally efficient mapping method for integration of the Hamiltonian field line equations are used to study the magnetic field structure in the ED. Asymptotical formulas for the perturbation magnetic field created by the ED coils are obtained and the spectrum of magnetic perturbations is analyzed and compared with the one of the TEXTOR-DED. The structure of ergodic and laminar zones are studied by plotting Poincare sections, so-called laminar plots (contour plots of wall to wall connection lengths) and magnetic footprints. The radial profiles of field line diffusion coefficients are calculated for different perturbation currents and it is found that for the Tore Supra case in the ergodic zone the numerical field line diffusion coefficients perfectly follow the quasilinear formula for smaller perturbation currents although the situation is different for the maximum perturbation current.
Results are presented that have been obtained while operating the graphite hollow cathode duoplasmatron ion source in dual mode under constant discharge current. This dual mode operation enabled us to obtain the mass and emission spectra simultaneously. In mass spectra C3 is the main feature but C4 and C5 are also prominent, whereas in emission spectra C2 is also there and its presence shows that it is in an excited state rather than in an ionic state. These facts provide evidence that C3 is produced due to the regeneration of a soot forming sequence and leave it in ionic state. C3 is a stable molecule and the only dominant species among the carbon clusters that survives in a regenerative sooting environment at high-pressure discharges.