This paper is an overview of recent results relating to turbulent particle and heat transport, and to the triggering of internal transport barriers (ITBs). The dependence of the turbulent particle pinch velocity on plasma parameters has been clarified and compared with experiment. Magnetic shear and collisionality are found to play a central role. Analysis of heat transport has made progress along two directions: dimensionless scaling laws, which are found to agree with the prediction for electrostatic turbulence, and analysis of modulation experiments, which provide a stringent test of transport models. Finally the formation of ITBs has been addressed by analysing electron transport barriers. It is confirmed that negative magnetic shear, combined with the Shafranov shift, is a robust stabilizing mechanism. However, some well established features of internal barriers are not explained by theory.

Results from an extensive database analysis of JET density profiles in stationary conditions show that the density peaking factor ne0/⟨ne⟩ in JET H modes increases from near 1.2 at high collisionality to around 1.5 as the plasma collisionality decreases towards the values expected for ITER. This result confirms an earlier observation on AUG. The density peaking behaviour of L modes is remarkably different from that of H modes, scaling with overall plasma shear as (ne0/⟨ne⟩ ∼ 1.5li), independently of collisionality. H-mode density profiles show no shear dependence, except at the lowest collisionalities. No evidence for LTe, LTi, ρ* or β dependences has been obtained. Carbon impurity density profiles from charge exchange spectroscopy are always less peaked than electron density profiles and usually flat in H modes. The peaking of the electron density profiles, together with the flatness of the impurity density profiles, are favourable for fusion performance if they can be extrapolated to ignited conditions.

For the first time, scalings for density peaking in tokamaks are obtained from a database consisting of observations from two devices, ASDEX Upgrade and JET. The investigation relies on an inversion method for the interferometer signals which grants consistent reconstructions despite differences in interferometer geometries. By combining observations from these devices, correlations between physics parameters investigated for their role in determining density peaking are reduced. Multiple regression analyses show that in the combined database collisionality is the most relevant parameter. The particle source provided by neutral beam injection provides a contribution to the peaking, which, although not negligible, is not large enough to explain the whole observed variation of density peaking. The device size, introduced as an alias for possible systematic differences between the devices not captured by the regression parameters, is found to play only a small role in regressions which include collisionality. Device size becomes relevant in scalings which exclude collisionality and include the ratio of the density to the Greenwald density limit. This indicates that density peaking is more likely to be a function of collisionality rather than of the fraction of the density limit. All the scalings which include collisionality in the regression variables predict a peaked density profile for the ITER standard scenario.

Abstract:Results from an extensive profile database analysis of JET density profiles in H-mode, show that the density peaking factor n e0 / in JET H-modes increases as the effective collisionality ν eff ≈10 −14 RZ eff n e /T e 2 drops from ~1 at mid-radius to below 0.1 as expected for ITER. Density peaking is also strongly correlated with the Greenwald number N G , the particle outward flux Γ from the neutral beam source and T i /T e . The correlations with l i , q 95 , β N , ρ*, L Te , L Ti , the toroidal Mach number and its shear are weak or insignificant. Hmodes heated only by ICRH are on average only slightly less peaked than H-modes dominated by NBI, demonstrating that neutral beam fuelling can only explain a modest part (~20%) of the peaking. Scaling expressions involving ν eff , N G , RΓ/(n e χ) and T i /T e suggest that n e0 / may exceed 1.5 in ITER, providing a boost of fusion power of more than 30% for fixed β and N G with respect to the usual assumption of a flat density profile.

Moderately peaked electron density profiles are observed in virtually all plasma conditions in TCV. The existence of an anomalous pinch is unambiguously demonstrated by the observation of peaked density profiles in stationary, fully relaxed, fully current driven electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) discharges with V loop = 0. The behaviour of the density profiles from a database of 300 Ohmic L-and H-mode, as well as electron cyclotron heating and ECCD discharges, is compared to predictions of models based on the Ware pinch, the curvature pinch and anomalous thermodiffusion. Best overall agreement throughout the database is obtained with models combining an anomalous pinch mechanism, such as the curvature pinch, with the Ware pinch.