As the finalization of the hydrogen experiment towards the deuterium phase, the exploration of the best performance of the hydrogen plasma was intensively performed in the Large Helical Device (LHD). High ion and electron temperatures, Ti, Te, of more than 6 keV were simultaneously achieved by superimposing the high power electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECH) on the neutral beam injection (NBI) heated plasma. Although flattening of the ion temperature profile in the core region was observed during the discharges, one could avoid the degradation by increasing the electron density. Another key parameter to present plasma performance is an averaged beta value . The high regime around 4 % was extended to an order of magnitude lower than the earlier collisional regime. Impurity behaviour in hydrogen discharges with NBI heating was also classified with the wide range of edge plasma parameters. Existence of no impurity accumulation regime where the high performance plasma is maintained with high power heating > 10 MW was identified. Wide parameter scan experiments suggest that the toroidal rotation and the turbulence are the candidates for expelling impurities from the core region.

Understanding of energetic particle (EP) confinement is one of the critical issues in realizing fusion reactor. In stellarator/helical devices, the research on EP confinement is one of the key topics to obtain better confinement by utilizing the flexibility of three-dimensional magnetic field. Study of EP transport in the Large Helical Device (LHD) has been performed by means of escaping EP diagnostics in hydrogen plasma operation. By starting deuterium operation of the LHD, confinement study of EPs has progressed remarkably by using newly developed comprehensive neutron diagnostics providing the information of EPs confined in the core region. The total neutron emission rate (Sn) increases due to the relatively low deviation of beam ion orbit from the flux surface with the inward shift of the magnetic axis. Sn has the peak around the electron density of 2×10 19 m -3 to 3×10 19 m -3 , as predicted. It is found that the fraction of beam-beam components in Sn is evaluated to be approximately 20% by the Fokker-Planck models TASK/FP in the plasma with both co-and counter-neutral beam injections. The equivalent fusion gain in DT plasma achieved 0.11 in a negative-ion-based neutral beam heated 2 plasma. Time evolution of Sn following the short pulse neutral beam injection into the electroncyclotron-heated low-beta plasma is reproduced by drift kinetic simulation, indicating that transport of beam ion injected by short pulse neutral beam can be described with neoclassical models in magnetohydrodynamic quiescent low-beta plasmas. The vertical neutron camera works successfully, demonstrating that in the co-neutral beam injected plasma, neutron emission profile shifts according to magnetic axis position. The shift of the neutron emission profile is reproduced by orbit-following models. The triton burnup study is performed for the first time in stellarator/heliotron so as to understand the alpha particle confinement. It is found that the triton burnup ratio, which largely increases at inward shifted configurations due to the better triton orbit and better plasma performance in inward shifted configuration is similar to that measured in tokamak having a similar minor radius with the LHD. We study the confinement capability of EPs toward a helical reactor in magnetohydrodynamic -quiescent region and expansion of the energetic-ion physics study in toroidal fusion plasmas.

The discharge scenario of high temperature plasma with a helical configuration has significantly progressed. The increase of central ion temperature due to the reduction of wall recycling was clearly observed. The peaking of the ion heating profile and the reduction of charge exchange loss of energetic ions play an important role for further improvement of ion heat transport in the ion internal transport barrier (ITB) core. The ion ITB and electron ITB have been successfully integrated due to the superposition of centrally focused electron cyclotron heating to the ion ITB plasma, and the high temperature regime of the ion temperature comparable to the electron temperature (T i ~ T e ) has been significantly extended. The width of the ion ITB formed with electron ITB is wider than the width of electron ITB. The positive radial electric field was observed in the integrated ITB plasma by a heavy ion beam probe, while the negative radial electric field was observed in ion ITB plasmas. The ion temperature gradient decreases with the increase of the temperature ratio (T e /T i ).

The driving and damping mechanism of plasma flow is an important issue because flow shear has a significant impact on turbulence in a plasma, which determines the transport in the magnetized plasma. Here we report clear evidence of the flow damping due to stochastization of the magnetic field. Abrupt damping of the toroidal flow associated with a transition from a nested magnetic flux surface to a stochastic magnetic field is observed when the magnetic shear at the rational surface decreases to 0.5 in the large helical device. This flow damping and resulting profile flattening are much stronger than expected from the Rechester–Rosenbluth model. The toroidal flow shear shows a linear decay, while the ion temperature gradient shows an exponential decay. This observation suggests that the flow damping is due to the change in the non-diffusive term of momentum transport.