Abstract:The impact of neutrals on anomalous edge plasma transport and zonal flow (ZF) is considered.As an example, it is assumed that edge plasma turbulence is driven by the resistive drift wave (RDW) instability. It is found that the actual effect of neutrals is not related to a suppression of the instability per se, but due to an impact on the ZF. Particularly, it is shown that, whereas the neutrals make very little impact on the linear growth rate of the RDW instability, they can largely reduce the zonal flow gener… Show more
“…This vorticity sink has been found to be important in situations with high neutrals densities, e.g. in linear devices [55] and in detached tokamak conditions [56]. But in our simulations so far, we have not observed a significant effect yet.…”
To make predictions for and design fusion reactors, a multitude of physical processes must be considered. In the edge and scrape-off layer (SOL), turbulent fluctuations intertwine with the plasma background, which is largely determined by neutral gas, and magnetic geometry plays an important role. A diffusive neutrals model has now been implemented in the global Braginskii edge turbulence code GRILLIX. The code is based on the flux-coordinate independent (FCI) approach, which allows efficient turbulence simulations in diverted equilibria. We validate simulations across the ASDEX Upgrade edge and SOL against measurements in discharge #36190, and find much better agreement thanks to the neutrals. Disentangling the effects of the neutral gas, we find that it affects the plasma in several ways. Firstly, the ionization of neutrals modifies the radial profiles of plasma density and temperature, leading to a transition of the turbulence drive from the general ballooning type to the ion temperature gradient type. Secondly, strong poloidal asymmetries can be induced due to divertor recycling, depending on the ionization pattern. As ballooned perpendicular plasma transport is stronger at the low-field side, neutrals penetrate deeper into the plasma at the high-field side, leading to significant ionization and radiation there. With increasing divertor neutrals density, the targets cool down while plasma density increases, more strongly at the high-field side. Much of the dynamics take place directly around the X-point and along the separatrix, which can be resolved by the FCI approach. Potential remains in extending the model and the code, but our results build confidence that predictive capability is within reach for major design questions for fusion reactors, such as the near SOL fall-off length.
“…This vorticity sink has been found to be important in situations with high neutrals densities, e.g. in linear devices [55] and in detached tokamak conditions [56]. But in our simulations so far, we have not observed a significant effect yet.…”
To make predictions for and design fusion reactors, a multitude of physical processes must be considered. In the edge and scrape-off layer (SOL), turbulent fluctuations intertwine with the plasma background, which is largely determined by neutral gas, and magnetic geometry plays an important role. A diffusive neutrals model has now been implemented in the global Braginskii edge turbulence code GRILLIX. The code is based on the flux-coordinate independent (FCI) approach, which allows efficient turbulence simulations in diverted equilibria. We validate simulations across the ASDEX Upgrade edge and SOL against measurements in discharge #36190, and find much better agreement thanks to the neutrals. Disentangling the effects of the neutral gas, we find that it affects the plasma in several ways. Firstly, the ionization of neutrals modifies the radial profiles of plasma density and temperature, leading to a transition of the turbulence drive from the general ballooning type to the ion temperature gradient type. Secondly, strong poloidal asymmetries can be induced due to divertor recycling, depending on the ionization pattern. As ballooned perpendicular plasma transport is stronger at the low-field side, neutrals penetrate deeper into the plasma at the high-field side, leading to significant ionization and radiation there. With increasing divertor neutrals density, the targets cool down while plasma density increases, more strongly at the high-field side. Much of the dynamics take place directly around the X-point and along the separatrix, which can be resolved by the FCI approach. Potential remains in extending the model and the code, but our results build confidence that predictive capability is within reach for major design questions for fusion reactors, such as the near SOL fall-off length.
“…Such an estimate is compatible with the interpretation suggested in [32] assuming a weak effect of the E × B shear. On the other hand, it is worth noting that the presence of neutrals could profoundly change the radial electric field pattern [43,64,65] at the separatrix and this will be subject of future investigation. The far SOL scale lengths are observed to be weakly affected by the density source intensity.…”
Simulations of plasma turbulence in a lower single-null magnetic configurations are presented. The plasma dynamics is modelled by the drift-reduced two-fluid Braginskii equations that are coupled with a kinetic model for a single neutral species that considers ionization, charge–exchange, recombination and elastic collisions. The effect of increased core fuelling on the plasma scrape-off layer (SOL) density and temperature profile is investigated. The increase in core fuelling leads to an increase of the e-folding length in the near SOL and, in the far SOL, to an increase of the plasma density. These results are in agreement with experimental measurements, and in particular with the observations of the formation of a density shoulder in high-fuelling scenarios. The physical mechanisms underlying the increase of the far SOL density are analysed comparing parallel and perpendicular fluxes in the SOL and considering also simulations with similar parameters but without neutrals. Despite the increase of the blob size, the increase of the far SOL density observed at high-fuelling rates is found to be mainly caused by the strong decrease of parallel transport, due to the cooling of electrons resulting from ionization events.
“…Neutral particle effects play an important role in plasma confinement and gas puff fueling in the scrape-off layer(SOL) [26][27][28][29] . Our results will contribute to turbulence physics including neutral effetcs in the SOL plasma [30][31][32][33] . In addition to this, since www.nature.com/scientificreports/ the experimental conditions of the present study are in parameters close to those of hall-thrusters 34 , magnetic nozzle thrusters 35 , or ionospheric plasmas 36 , it should impact on these studies.…”
Section: Discussionmentioning
confidence: 80%
“…At the plasma edge 60 mm, neutral particle is richer than core and its effect should be strong. Thus, another candidates of identity of the low freuquency modes could be related neutral pressure gradient from edge to core 30 , 31 , 39 . Figure 5 Radial profile of power spectrum density of normalized density fluctuations.…”
High-spatial resolution observation of high-wavenumber broadband turbulence is achieved by controlling the magnetic field to be relatively low and measuring with a azimuthally arranged multi-channel Langmuir array in a basic laboratory plasma. The observed turbulence consists of narrowband low-frequency fluctuations and broadband high-frequency turbulent fluctuations. The low-frequency fluctuations have a frequency of about 0.7 times the ion cyclotron frequency and a spatial scale of 1/10 of the ion inertial scale. In comparison, high-frequency fluctuations have a higher frequency than the ion cyclotron frequency and spatial scales of 1/10–1/40 of the ion inertial scale. Two-dimensional correlation analysis evaluates the spatial and temporal correlation lengths and reveals that the high-wavenumber broadband fluctuations have turbulent characteristics. The measurements give us further understanding of small scale turbulence in space and fusion plasmas.
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