The progress of physical understanding as well as parameter improvement of net-current-free helical plasma is reported for the Large Helical Device since the last Fusion Energy Conference in Daejeon in 2010. The second low-energy neutral beam line was installed, and the central ion temperature has exceeded 7 keV, which was obtained by carbon pellet injection. Transport analysis of the high-Ti plasmas shows that the ion-thermal conductivity and viscosity decreased after the pellet injection although the improvement does not last long. The effort has been focused on the optimization of plasma edge conditions to extend the operation regime towards higher ion temperature and more stable high density and high beta. For this purpose a portion of the open helical divertors are being modified to the baffle-structured closed ones aimed at active control of the edge plasma. It is compared with the open case that the neutral pressure in the closed helical divertor increased by ten times as predicted by modelling. Studies of physics in a three-dimensional geometry are highlighted in the topics related to the response to a resonant magnetic perturbation at the plasma periphery such as edge-localized-mode mitigation and divertor detachment. Novel approaches of non-local and non-diffusive transport have also been advanced.

The phenomenon of multifaceted asymmetric radiation from the edge (MARFE) is investigated with impurity gas puff from the upper divertor on the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). A typical process in which dense radiation region in the vicinity of the X point (X-point MARFE) further evolves into MARFE on the high field side (wall MARFE) after the plasma ma kes a transition from H-mode to L-mode confinement is observed in discharges with the impurity gas seeding. The electron density distribution and evolution in the divertor volume are measured by means of spectroscopy. It is observed in the experiments that the final position of MARFE is related to the ion ∇B drift direction. After the phase difference of n = 1 resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) change from 90 • to 270 • , MARFE begins to appear on the high field side, which may be caused by the density pump-out induced by RMP. At the same heating power, the density threshold for MARFE formation is somewhat higher in the Ne seeding discharge than in the Ar seeding discharge. This may be attributed to the fact that the divertor radiation fraction, P rad,div /P rad,main , in the Ne seeding discharge is lower than that in the Ar seeding discharge. In addition, MARFE is successfully suppressed by total radiated energy feedback control in radiative divertor experiments. Therefore, radiation feedback control may play a vital role in avoiding major disruption induced by impurity radiation in radiative divertor experiments.

Tomographic reconstruction for a tangentially viewing two-dimensional (2D) imaging system is studied. A method to calculate the geometry matrix in 2D tomography is introduced. An algorithm based on a PhillipsTikhonov (P-T) type regularization method is investigated, and numerical tests using the P-T method are conducted with both tokamak and Heliotron configurations. The numerical tests show that the P-T method is not sensitive to the added noise levels and the emission profiles with higher mode numbers can be reconstructed with adequate resolution. The results indicate that this method is suitable for 2D tomographic reconstruction for a tangentially viewing vacuum ultraviolet telescope system.

The deposition profile of the impurity pellet is measured by a two-dimensional fastframing vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) camera system in the large helical device (LHD). The fast framing camera selectively measures the emission from the hydrogen-like ions of carbon (C VI) with a frame rate of several kHz. From the emission profile of the hydrogen-like carbon ions, which are in the process of ionization, the initial deposition profile of the carbon is estimated using a simple one-dimensional transport model.