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Emission contributions from charge-exchange of excited deuterium (n = 2, 3) with He+ are evaluated in a 1-D kinetic collisional radiative model in order to analyze their effects on the Thermal Helium Beam (THB) line-ratio diagnostic on ASDEX Upgrade and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) He I density measurements in ITER. Recent charge-exchange calculations show that cross sections from excited deuterium (n = 2, 3) with He+ are over 4-orders of magnitude higher than those from the ground state (n = 1) and occur at very low energies where they are more likely to interact with the thermal He+ ions introduced by ionization of the diagnostic helium gas-puff injection. Higher densities of excited deuterium are typically present in the Scrape-Off Layer (SOL), divertor, and edge regions of tokamaks, where the LIF and THB helium diagnostics are typically used for nHeI and simultaneous determination of electron temperatures and densities and where contributions from charge-exchange emission may offset these values if not taken into account. The analysis presented in this work shows that due to the higher density of deuterium in the ground rather than in excited states and the divergent behavior of deuterium and He+ density profiles along the SOL and edge regions, the deuterium-He+ charge-exchange contributions to the helium puff emission are 3-orders of magnitude lower than those from electron-impact excitation. Similar plasma conditions are expected in the ITER divertor, with the exception that in the area near the strike-points and targets, the electron temperature is not high enough to excite from the ground state but deuterium, electron, and He+ densities are high enough to dominate the emission from charge-exchange and recombination. These findings strengthen the assumption made in the present line-ratio model that helium emission from gas-puff into plasma is mainly dominated by electron-excitation. It is also shown that, in general, charge-exchange helium emission is 2-orders of magnitude higher than the emission due to recombination. These findings suggest the importance of including charge-exchange processes as a source of neutrals in ionic fractional abundance calculations in plasmas and helium-ash transport modeling in fusion reactors.

Modern tokamak H-mode discharges routinely operate at high plasma beta. Dedicated experiments performed on multiple machines measure contradicting dependence of the plasma confinement on this important parameter. In view of designing high-performance scenarios for next-generation devices like ITER, a fundamental understanding of the involved physics is crucial. Theoretical results—most of which have been obtained for simplified setups—indicate that increased beta does not only modify the characteristics of microturbulence but also potentially introduces fundamentally new physics. Empowered by highly accurate measurements at ASDEX Upgrade, the GENE turbulence code is used to perform a comprehensive gyrokinetic study of dedicated H-Mode plasmas. We find the stabilization of ion-temperature-gradient driven turbulence to be the most pronounced beta effect in these experimentally relevant cases. The resulting beta-improved core confinement should thus be considered for extrapolations to future machines.

In direct drive inertial confinement fusion, the residual speckle pattern remaining after beam smoothing plays an important role in the seeding of instabilities at the ablation front. An x-ray laser is used as an extreme ultraviolet backlighter to characterize the imprinted modulation in thin foils for smoothing by random phase plate and by spectral dispersion for both 0.35 and 0.53 mu m irradiation, and by induced spatial incoherence for 0.53 mu m irradiation. Measurements of the imprinted modulation due to a single optical mode generated by two beam interference, and modification of the imprint with a superposed smooth irradiation to study time dependence of the imprinting process are demonstrated. (C) 1997 American Institute of Physics.

In direct drive ICF, nonuniformities in laser illumination seed ripples at the ablation front in a process called imprint. These non nonuniformities grow during the capsule implosion and, if initially large enough, can penetrate the capsule shell, impede ignition, or degrade burn. Imprint has been simulated for recent experiments performed on the Nova laser at LLNL examining a variety of beam smoothing conditions. Most used laser intensities similar to the early part of an ignition capsule pulse shape, I=10X13 W/cm3. The simulations matched most of the measurements of imprint modulation. The effect of imprint upon National Ignition Facility (NIF) direct drive ignition capsules has also been simulated. Imprint is predicted to give modulation comparable to an intrinsic surface finish of 10 nm RMS. Modulation growth was examined using the Haan model, with linear growth as a function of spherical harmonic mode number obtained from an analytic dispersion relation. Ablation front amplitudes are predicted to become substantially nonlinear, so that saturation corrections are large. Direct numerical simulations of two- dimensional multimode growth were also performed. The capsule shell is predicted to remain intact, which gives a basis for believing that ignition can be achieved.

In tokamak plasmas with different main ion species, a change in confinement occurs, known as the isotope effect. Experiments comparing hydrogen (H), deuterium (D), and helium (4He) plasmas have been performed to identify processes that define the pedestal structure and evolution in between the crashes of edge localized modes (ELMs). The pedestal top electron densities and temperatures have been matched to compare the pedestal shape and stability. In the D and H discharges, the pedestal electron temperature profiles do not differ, whereas the density profile in H has shallower gradients. Furthermore, the heat flux across the pedestal in H is roughly a factor of two higher than in D. In 4He plasmas at similar stored energy, the pedestal top electron density is roughly a factor of 1.5 larger than in the references owing to the larger effective charge. The peeling-ballooning theory, which is independent of the main ion species mass, can sufficiently describe the pedestal stability in the hydrogenic plasmas. The inter-ELM pedestal evolution has the same sequence of recovery phases for all investigated species, giving evidence that similar mechanisms are acting in the pedestals. This is further supported by a similar evolution of the inter-ELM magnetic signature and the corresponding toroidal structure.

Characterizing pedestal turbulence in the tokamak I-mode is a crucial step in understanding how particle and heat transport decouple during I-mode operation. This work models an ASDEX Upgrade I-mode discharge for the first time via linear and nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations with the GENE code. L-mode and I-mode regimes at two different pedestal locations are investigated. A microtearing mode that is not apparent in initial value linear L-mode simulations is found to dominate in I-mode simulations at both radial positions, and ion-scale instabilities are characterized for all four scenarios linearly. Computed nonlinear heat flux values approach experimental measurements with nominal input parameters in three of the four cases, and heat transport is found to be dominated by ion-scale electrostatic turbulence. Electrostatic potential oscillation frequencies, as well as potential-temperature and potential-density crossphases, are compared linearly and nonlinearly, and agreement is found at wavenumber ranges corresponding to peaks in the simulated heat flux spectra at one radial position for L-mode and I-mode.