In addition to the operational limits imposed by MHD stability on plasma current and pressure, an independent limit on plasma density is observed in confined toroidal plasmas. This review attempts to summarize recent work on the phenomenology and physics of the density limit. Perhaps the most surprising result is that all of the toroidal confinement devices considered operate in similar ranges of (suitably normalized) densities. The empirical scalings derived independently for tokamaks and reversed-field pinches are essentially identical, while stellarators appear to operate at somewhat higher densities with a different scaling. Dedicated density limit experiments have not been carried out for spheromaks and field-reversed configurations, however, `optimized' discharges in these devices are also well characterized by the same empirical law. In tokamaks, where the most extensive studies have been conducted, there is strong evidence linking the limit to physics near the plasma boundary: thus, it is possible to extend the operational range for line-averaged density by operating with peaked density profiles. Additional particles in the plasma core apparently have no effect on density limit physics. While there is no widely accepted, first principles model for the density limit, research in this area has focussed on mechanisms which lead to strong edge cooling. Theoretical work has concentrated on the consequences of increased impurity radiation which may dominate power balance at high densities and low temperatures. These theories are not entirely satisfactory as they require assumptions about edge transport and make predictions for power and impurity scaling that may not be consistent with experimental results. A separate thread of research looks for the cause in collisionality enhanced turbulent transport. While there is experimental and theoretical support for this approach, understanding of the underlying mechanisms is only at a rudimentary stage and no predictive capability is yet available.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0741-3335/44/8/201/pdf

Density limits in toroidal plasmas

The proposed Fusion Nuclear Science Facility (FNSF) represents the first facility to enter the complex fusion nuclear regime, and its technical mission and attributes are being developed. The FNSF ...

The Fusion Nuclear Science Facility, the Critical Step in the Pathway to Fusion Energy

In both JET and ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) the plasma energy confinement has been affected by the presence of a metal wall by the requirement of increased gas fuelling to avoid tungsten pollution of the plasma. In JET with a beryllium/tungsten wall the high triangularity baseline H-mode scenario (i.e. similar to the ITER reference scenario) has been the strongest affected and the benefit of high shaping to give good normalized confinement of H98 ∼ 1 at high Greenwald density fraction of fGW ∼ 0.8 has not been recovered to date. In AUG with a full tungsten wall, a good normalized confinement H98 ∼ 1 could be achieved in the high triangularity baseline plasmas, albeit at elevated normalized pressure βN > 2. The confinement lost with respect to the carbon devices can be largely recovered by the seeding of nitrogen in both JET and AUG. This suggests that the absence of carbon in JET and AUG with a metal wall may have affected the achievable confinement. Three mechanisms have been tested that could explain the effect of carbon or nitrogen (and the absence thereof) on the plasma confinement. First it has been seen in experiments and by means of nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations (with the GENE code), that nitrogen seeding does not significantly change the core temperature profile peaking and does not affect the critical ion temperature gradient. Secondly, the dilution of the edge ion density by the injection of nitrogen is not sufficient to explain the plasma temperature and pressure rise. For this latter mechanism to explain the confinement improvement with nitrogen seeding, strongly hollow Zeff profiles would be required which is not supported by experimental observations. The confinement improvement with nitrogen seeding cannot be explained with these two mechanisms. Thirdly, detailed pedestal structure analysis in JET high triangularity baseline plasmas have shown that the fuelling of either deuterium or nitrogen widens the pressure pedestal. However, in JET-ILW this only leads to a confinement benefit in the case of nitrogen seeding where, as the pedestal widens, the obtained pedestal pressure gradient is conserved. In the case of deuterium fuelling in JET-ILW the pressure gradient is strongly degraded in the fuelling scan leading to no net confinement gain due to the pedestal widening. The pedestal code EPED correctly predicts the pedestal pressure of the unseeded plasmas in JET-ILW within ±5%, however it does not capture the complex variation of pedestal width and gradient with fuelling and impurity seeding. Also it does not predict the observed increase of pedestal pressure by nitrogen seeding in JET-ILW. Ideal peeling ballooning MHD stability analysis shows that the widening of the pedestal leads to a down shift of the marginal stability boundary by only 10–20%. However, the variations in the pressure gradient observed in the JET-ILW fuelling experiment is much larger and spans a factor of more than two. As a result the experimental points move from deeply unstable to deeply stable on the stability diagram in a deuterium fuelling scan. In AUG-W nitrogen seeded plasmas, a widening of the pedestal has also been observed, consistent with the JET observations. The absence of carbon can thus affect the pedestal structure, and mainly the achieved pedestal gradient, which can be recovered by seeding nitrogen. The underlying physics mechanism is still under investigation and requires further understanding of the role of impurities on the pedestal stability and pedestal structure formation.

EFD-C(13)03/04 The Effect of a Metal Wall on Confinement in JET and ASDEX Upgrade

The former all-carbon wall on JET has been replaced with beryllium in the main torus and tungsten in the divertor to mimic the surface materials envisaged for ITER. Comparisons are presented between Type I H-mode characteristics in each design by examining respective scans over deuterium fuelling and impurity seeding, required to ameliorate exhaust loads both in JET at full capability and in ITER.

Contrasting H-mode behaviour with deuterium fuelling and nitrogen seeding in the all-carbon and metallic versions of JET

ELMy H-mode experiments at JET in 2000/mid-2002 have focused on discharges with normalized parameters for plasma density, energy confinement and beta similar to those of the ITER Q(DT) = 10 referen ...

Toward the realization on JET of an integrated H-mode scenario for ITER

An overview is given of recent advances toward the realization of high density, high confinement plasmas with radiating mantles in limiter and divertor tokamaks worldwide. Radiatively improved mode discharges on the Torus Experiment for Technology Oriented Research 94 (TEXTOR-94) [Proceedings of the 16th IEEE Symposium on Fusion Engineering, 1995 (Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, Piscataway, NJ, 1995), p. 470] have recently been obtained at trans-Greenwald densities (up to n/nGW=1.4) with high confinement mode free of edge localized modes (ELM-free H-mode) confinement quality. Experiments in DIII-D [J. Luxon et al., Proceedings of the 11th IAEA Conference on Plasma Physics and Controlled Nuclear Fusion Research (International Atomic Energy Association, Vienna, 1987), Vol. 1, p. 159] divertor plasmas with a low confinement mode edge have confirmed the dramatic changes in confinement observed with impurity seeding on TEXTOR-94. Recent experiment with impurity seeding on the Joint Europea...

/pdf/recent-progress-toward-high-performance-above-the-greenwald-3ga1c28on3.pdf

Recent progress toward high performance above the Greenwald density limit in impurity seeded discharges in limiter and divertor tokamaks

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Recent progress toward high performance above the Greenwald density limit in impurity seeded discharges in limiter and divertor tokamaks