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In electron (cyclotron) heated plasmas, in both ASDEX Upgrade (L-mode) and Wendelstein 7-X, clamping of the ion temperature occurs at T i ∼ 1.5 keV independent of magnetic configuration. The ions in such plasmas are heated through the energy exchange power as n e 2 ( T e − T i ) / T e 3 / 2 , which offers a broad ion heating profile, similar to that offered by alpha heating in future thermonuclear fusion reactors. However, the predominant electron heating may put an additional constraint on the ion heat transport, as the ratio T e/T i > 1 can exacerbates ITG/TEM core turbulence. Therefore, in practical terms the strongly ‘stiff’ core transport translates into T i-clamping in electron heated plasmas. Due to this clamping, electron heated L-mode scenarios, with standard gas fueling, in either tokamaks or stellarators may struggle to reach high normalized ion temperature gradients required in a compact fusion reactor. The comparison shows that core heat transport in neoclassically optimized stellarators is driven by the same mechanisms as in tokamaks. The absence of a strong H-mode temperature edge pedestal in stellarators, sofar (which, like in tokamaks, could lift the clamped temperature-gradients in the core), puts a strong requirement on reliable and sustainable core turbulence suppression techniques in stellarators.

EUROfusion Consortium 633053

In ASDEX Upgrade, the propagation of cold pulses induced by type-I edge localized modes (ELMs) is studied using electron cyclotron emission measurements, in a dataset of plasmas with moderate triangularity. It is found that the edge safety factor or the plasma current are the main determining parameters for the inward penetration of the T-e perturbations. With increasing plasma current the ELM penetration is more shallow in spite of the stronger ELMs. Estimates of the heat pulse diffusivity show that the corresponding transport is too large to be representative of the inter-ELM phase. Ergodization of the plasma edge during ELMs is a possible explanation for the observed properties of the cold pulse propagation, which is qualitatively consistent with non-linear magneto-hydro-dynamic simulations. For complete list of authors see http://dx.doi.org/10.1088/1361-6587/aaf9c3

The edge CXRS system at ASDEX Upgrade has been upgraded to provide temporally and radially resolved measurements of the ion temperature, density, fluid velocity and hence Er via the radial force balance equation with unprecedented temporal resolution. The new system enables measurements with a frequency of up to 20 kHz and a radial resolution of down to 3 mm. Together with knowledge of ne, the CXRS measurements can be used to test the limit of the neoclassical prediction of the E×B velocity. A comparison between vE×B and vidia during a constant I-phase shows no deviations between the measurements within the temporal resolution of 100 s. Within the same timescale, the edge gradients and flows are found to evolve together during the whole transition from L- to H-mode. Hence, vE×B seems to be dominated by the collisional (neoclassical) contribution because a substantial contribution from turbulence induced flows should induce delays or differences between vE×B and vidia. A constant E×B shear is observed at the H-mode onset across a large database of L-H transitions under different conditions, including hydrogen and deuterium plasmas. This result is in agreement with [6, 7] and identifies Erneo as a key role for the L-H transition. Finally, Er and Erneo have been compared during an ELM cycle. Good agreement has been observed throughout the ELM cycle, except for the phase 2 to 4 ms after the ELM crash. However, due to the relatively large error bars in this phase further investigations are needed to confirm this observation.

A summary of recent results on filamentary transport, mostly obtained in the ASDEX-Upgrade tokamak (AUG), is presented and discussed in an attempt to produce a coherent picture of SOL filamentary transport: A clear correlation is found between L-mode density shoulder formation in the outer midplane and a transition between the sheath limited and the inertial filamentary regimes. Divertor collisionality is found to be the parameter triggering the transition. A clear reduction of the ion temperature takes place in the far SOL after the transition, both for the background and the filaments. This coincides with a strong variation of the ion temperature distribution, which deviates from Gaussianity and becomes dominated by a strong peak below $5$ eV. The filament transition mechanism triggered by a critical value of collisionality seems to be generally applicable to inter-ELM H-mode plasmas, although a secondary threshold related to deuterium fueling is observed. EMC3-EIRENE simulations of neutral dynamics show that an ionization front near the main chamber wall is formed after the shoulder formation. Finally, a clear increase of SOL opacity to neutrals is observed associated to the shoulder formation. A common SOL transport framework is proposed account for all these results, and their potential implications for future generation devices are discussed., Published in Nuclear Fusion

International audience; The ultra-fast swept reflectometer with the sweep time of 1 ? s, inferior to the characteristic turbulent time scale, has provided the measurements of the fast density and density fluctuation evolution across major parts of tokamak plasma radius. The L-H transitions in a series of plasma discharges in ASDEX Upgrade have been studied with a high temporal resolution. The comparison of the density fluctuation behaviour in L- and H-mode is presented. The I-phase oscillation dynamics has been described in terms of the density fluctuation level, the radial electric field and the normalised electron pressure gradient. Indications for a phase shift between the turbulence and the radial electric field are observed in the beginning of the I-phase, where the turbulence grows first and the radial electric field increase follows. In the established I-phase the electric field and the turbulence are in phase.

This letter shows for the first time a pronounced increase of extremely intermittent edge density turbulence behavior inside the confinement region related to the I-mode confinement regime in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak. With improving confinement, the perpendicular propagation velocity of density fluctuations in the plasma edge increases together with the intermittency of the observed density bursts. Furthermore, it is shown that the weakly coherent mode, a fluctuation feature generally observed in I-mode plasmas, is connected to the observed bursts. It is suggested that the large amplitude density bursts could be generated by a non-linearity similar to that in the Korteweg–de-Vries equation which includes the radial temperature gradient.

Besides strong geodesic acoustic mode (GAM) activity, turbulence in the I-mode confinement regime of ASDEX Upgrade exhibits two prominent features, the weakly coherent mode (WCM) and strongly intermittent solitary density perturbations. The nonlinear interaction between these structures is studied in detail by means of a conditional averaged wavelet- bicoherence analysis. The wavelet analysis reveals that these density perturbations are at the WCM frequency. The GAM is coupled to all frequency scales of the velocity fluctuations via a modulational instability. The WCM shows coupling to higher frequencies prior to the bursts, indicating a process resembling wave-steepening. A possible mechanism for the generation of such solitary density perturbations by a Korteweg – de Vries-like nonlinearity is discussed. European Union (EUROfusion 633053)

The intermittent character of turbulent transport is investigated with Langmuir probes in the scrape-off layer and across the separatrix of ASDEX Upgrade Ohmic discharges. Radial profiles of plasma parameters are in reasonable agreement with results from other diagnostics. The probability density functions of ion-saturation current fluctuations exhibit a parabolic relation between skewness and kurtosis. Intermittent blobs and holes are observed outside and inside the nominal separatrix, respectively. They seem to be born at the edge of the plasma and are not the foothills of avalanches launched in the plasma core. A strong shear flow was observed 1 cm radially outside the location where blobs and holes seem to be generated.

We report the latest results of turbulence and transport studies in the ASDEX Upgrade scrape-off layer (SOL). Dissimilarity between the plasma and the floating potential fluctuations is studied experimentally and by gyrofluid simulations. Measurements by a retarding field analyser reveal that both, edge-localized mode (ELM) and turbulent filaments, convey hot ions over large radial distances in the SOL. The measured far SOL ELM ion temperature increases with the ELM energy, consistent with earlier observations that large ELMs deposit a large fraction of their energy outside the divertor. In the SOL, the ELM suppression by magnetic perturbations (MPs) results in lower ELM ion energy in the far SOL. At the same time, large filaments of ion saturation current are replaced by more continuous bursts. Splitting of the divertor strike zones observed by the infrared imaging in H-mode with MPs agree with predictions from the EMC3-Eirene simulations. This suggests that the ‘lobe’ structures due to perturbation fields observed near the X-point are not significantly affected by plasma screening, and can be described by a vacuum approach, as in the EMC3-Eirene. Finally, some effects of the MPs on the L-mode SOL are addressed.

ASDEX Upgrade has been operated with tungsten-coated plasma-facing components for several years. H-mode operation with good confinement has been demonstrated. Nevertheless, purely neutral beam injection-heated H-modes with reduced gas puff, moderate heating power or/and increased triangularity tend to accumulate tungsten, followed by a radiative collapse. Under these conditions, central electron heating with electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), usually in X2 polarization, changes the impurity transport in the plasma centre, reducing the central tungsten concentration and, in many cases, stabilizing the plasma. In order to extend the applicability of central ECRH to a wider range of magnetic field and plasma current additional ECRH schemes with reduced single-pass absorption have been implemented: X3 heating allows us to reduce the magnetic field by 30%, such that the first H-modes with an ITER-like value of the safety factor of q 95 = 3 could be run in the tungsten-coated device. O2 heating increases the cutoff density by a factor of 2 allowing higher currents and triangularities to be addressed. For both schemes, scenarios have been developed to cope with the associated reduced absorption. In the case of central X3 heating, the X2 resonance lies close to the pedestal top at the high-field side of the plasma, serving as a beam dump. For O2, holographic mirrors have been developed which guarantee a second pass through the plasma centre. The beam position on these reflectors is controlled by fast thermocouples. Stray-radiation protection has been implemented using sniffer probes.

Properties of the I­mode confinement regime on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak are summarized. A weak dependence of the power threshold for the L­I transition on the toroidal magnetic field strength is found. During improved confinement, the edge radial electric field well deepens. Stability calculations show that the I­mode pedestal is peeling­ballooning stable. Turbulence investigations reveal strongly intermittent density fluctuations linked to the weakly coherent mode in the confined plasma, which become stronger as the confinement quality increases. Across all investigated structure sizes ( ≈ ⊥ k 5 – 12 cm − 1 , with ⊥ k the perpendicular wavenumber of turbulent density fluctuations), the intermittent turbulence bursts are observed. Comparison with bolometry data shows that they move poloidally toward the X­point and finally end up in the divertor. This might be indicative that they play a role in inhibiting the density profile growth, such that no pedestal is formed in the edge density profile. European Union (EUROfusion 633053) European Union (EUROfusion AWP15­ENR­09/IPP­02)

Poloidal asymmetries of the propagation velocity of density fluctuations perpendicular to the magnetic field measured with Doppler reflectometry have been reported in several magnetic confinement plasma devices. Careful analysis of a large variety of different low confinement mode plasma scenarios performed at the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak does not reveal such an asymmetry outside the uncertainties of the evaluation process of the measurement data. The perpendicular velocity is investigated between mid-radius and the plasma edge and follows the poloidal dependence of the E × B drift velocity regardless of the probed turbulence structure size. Compared to measurements of a charge exchange recombination spectroscopy diagnostic this points towards a significantly smaller phase velocity than the E × B drift velocity. The analysis technique is presented in a representative discharge together with a sensitivity study of the impact of density, magneto hydrodynamic equilibrium and diagnostic alignment on the interpretation of the measured Doppler shift using ray tracing and thus on poloidal asymmetries. Three more highly different plasma scenarios with poloidally symmetric velocity profiles are shown.

The connection between midplane and divertor conditions is studied on ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) for H-mode scenarios. H-mode discharges with variations in fuelling, heating power and impurity seeding are analysed, enabling to disentangle their impact on the evolution of midplane density profiles. The O-mode reflectometer installed on AUG provides unique insights on the midplane density profiles thanks to the ability to measure simultaneously at the high-field-side (HFS) and the low-field-side (LFS). At the inner divertor, with the onset of detachment, a region of high density is formed (HFS high density front, HFSHD) that expands into the HFS midplane, leading to strong poloidal asymmetries in the main chamber scrape-off layer (SOL) density. A good agreement is observed between the evolution of the density profiles at the midplane and that of the divertor volume density confirming the strong influence of divertor conditions on the midplane density profiles at the HFS. Our results confirm the existence of a relationship between plasma confinement, the shift in the midplane LFS density profile and the presence of the HFSHD with respect to changes in seeding and fuelling. It is established that the separatrix density at the LFS is better correlated with the neutral pressure at the outer target while the HFS SOL density follows the neutral pressure at the inner divertor. A comprehensive characterisation of the edge-localised mode (ELM) evolution at the midplane and divertor is performed demonstrating that also during the ELM cycle the divertor conditions have a strong effect on the SOL density at the midplane. The most striking result is the observation of a HFSHD at the HFS midplane just after the ELM crash associated with strong inner divertor detachment.

The relation between the macroscopic input power required at ASDEX Upgrade to access the H-mode Pthr and the microscopic E x B shear has been investigated via fast charge-exchange recombination spectroscopy (CXRS) measurements at various toroidal magnetic fields, different electron densities, and in both hydrogen and deuterium plasmas. For the H-mode onset, a threshold in the v E x B minimum, an approximation of the E x B shear, has been found. This identifies v E x B and not Er as the important player for the L-H transition. A database of measurements including CXRS, Doppler reflectometry measurements and comparison to neoclassical approximations shows a threshold v E x B of (6.7 ± 1.0) km/s ranging over a factor of three in Pthr. Using these findings, a simple derivation of the Pthr scaling is proposed giving a physics interpretation of the Bt, density and surface dependence of Pthr. EUROfusion Consortium Grant Agreement No. 633053

Edge localized modes (ELMs) are magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities that cause fast periodic relaxations of the strong edge pressure gradient in tokamak fusion plasmas. A novel diagnostic method allows the extraction of toroidal mode numbers, rotation velocities and spatial information during the ELM cycle including the crash. While mode number branches n = 3-6 and n = 8-10 are dominant just before the ELM crash, during the ELM crash n = 2-5 are observed in typical discharges with type-I ELMs in the tokamak experiment. These findings are compared to results from nonlinear MHD simulations. Although n = 6 is linearly dominant, nonlinear coupling in which n = 1 is particularly important leads to the dominance of n = 3-5 during the ELM crash, in excellent agreement with experimental observations. The simultaneous occurrence of these modes over a wide radial region leads to high stochasticity and thus increased transport.

Limit-cycle oscillations (LCOs) close to the power threshold of L- to H-mode transitions are investigated in plasmas of ASDEX Upgrade. During this phase, referred to as I-phase, a strong magnetic activity in the poloidal magnetic field B ⋅ θ with an up–down asymmetry is found. In some cases, the regular LCOs during I-phase transition smoothly into a phase with intermittent bursts which have similar properties to type-III edge localised modes (ELMs). Indications of precursors during the intermittent phase as well as in the regular LCO phase point to a common nature of the I-phase and type-III ELMs. The LCO frequency measured in a set of discharges with different plasma currents and magnetic fields scales as f ∼ ( B t 1 / 2 I p 3 / 2 ) / ( n T ) .

The thermal helium beam edge diagnostic has recently been upgraded at the ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) tokamak experiment. Line ratio spectroscopy on neutral helium is a valuable tool for simultaneous determination of the electron temperature and density of plasmas. The diagnostic now offers a temporal resolution of 900 kHz with a spatial resolution of up to 3 mm at 32 lines of sight (LOS) simultaneously. The LOS covers a radial region of 8.5 cm, starting at the limiter radius and reaching into the confined region beyond the separatrix. Two components are of particular importance for the aforementioned hardware improvements. The first is the optical head, which collects the light from the experiment. Equipped with an innovative clamping system for optical fiber ends, an arbitrary distribution pattern of LOS can be achieved to gain radial and poloidal profiles. The second major development is a new polychromator system that measures the intensity of the 587 nm, 667 nm, 706 nm, and 728 nm helium lines simultaneously for 32 channels with filter-photomultiplier tube arrays. Thus, the thermal helium beam diagnostic supplements the AUG edge diagnostics, offering fast and spatially highly resolved electron temperature and density profile measurements that cover the plasma edge and scrape-off layer region. Plasma fluctuations, edge localized modes, filaments, and other turbulent structures are resolved, allowing analysis of their frequency and localization or their propagation velocity.

Recently, a European transport project has been carried out among several fusion devices for studying the possible link between the mean radial electric field (E r ), long-range correlation (LRC) and edge bifurcations in fusion plasmas. The main results reported in this paper include: (i) the discovery of low-frequency LRCs in potential fluctuations which are amplified during the development of edge mean E r using electrode biasing and during the spontaneous development of edge sheared flows in stellarators and tokamaks. Evidence of nonlocal energy transfer and the geodesic acoustic mode modulation on local turbulent transport have also been observed. The observed LRCs are consistent with the theory of zonal flows described by a ‘predator–prey’ model. The results point to a significant link between the LRC and transport bifurcation. (ii) Comparative studies in tokamaks, stellarators and reversed field pinches have revealed significant differences in the level of the LRC. Whereas the LRCs are clearly observed in tokamaks and stellarators, no clear signature of LRCs was seen in the RFX-mod reversed field pinch experiments. These results suggest the possible influence of magnetic perturbations on the LRC, in agreement with recent observations in the resonant magnetic perturbation experiments at the TEXTOR tokamak. (iii) The degree of the LRCs is strongly reduced on approaching the plasma density-limit in tokamaks and stellarators, suggesting the possible role of collisionality or/and the impact of mean E r × B flow shear on zonal flows.

Plasma turbulence is characterised by the fluctuation of density, potential and temperature on all temporal and spatial scales. In magnetically confined plasmas, turbulence causes an increased particle and heat transport across the magnetic field lines. The focus of this work is the experimental investigation of density and potential fluctuations and the resulting turbulent transport. A poloidal Langmuir probe array with 64 tips is employed to investigate turbulence in the confinement region at all spatial scales. A dependence on the drift scale rho_s is found. The cross phase between density and potential fluctuations is near zero, indicating drift wave turbulence. This result is also found in simulations. Finally, the conditional averaging method was used to detect the spatio-temporal structure of turbulent events with simple two probe measurements. The results are in agreement with the results from the probe array. keine dt.-spr. Zusammenfassung

Keine englischsprachige Zusammenfassung vorhanden. Die Plasmaturbulenz im Kieler Torsatron TJ-K wird mit Hilfe eines Zweiflüssikeits-Codes simuliert. Aus den Ergebnissen werden mit Hilfe statistischer Verfahren Größen extrahiert, die im Experiment ebenfalls zur Verfügung stehen.

Edge localized modes (ELMs) are magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) instabilities that cause fast periodic relaxations of the strong edge pressure gradient in tokamak fusion plasmas. Magnetic pick-up coils allow the extraction of toroidal mode numbers n during the ELM cycle including the nonlinear crash on ASDEX Upgrade, providing a good comparability to nonlinear 3D MHD codes. This paper investigates how the mode numbers before and during the ELM crash change with a variation of plasma parameters. It is found that the toroidal structure size during the crash is similar to the one existing slightly before and always has a low n = 1-7 range. Furthermore, in the nonlinear phase of the ELM n does not show a clear trend with most peeling-ballooning relevant parameters such as normalized pressure gradient, bootstrap current density or triangularity, whereas a strong decrease of n with edge safety factor q 95 is observed in agreement with nonlinear modeling in the here investigated high collisionality region. A simple geometric model is presented, which is capable of explaining the q scaling by existence of ballooned structures that minimize n.

In magnetically confined fusion plasmas controlled gas injection is crucial for plasma fuelling as well as for various diagnostic applications such as active spectroscopy. We present a new, versatile system for the injection of collimated thermal gas beams into a vacuum chamber. This system consists of a gas pressure chamber, sealed by a custom made piezo valve towards a small capillary for gas injection. The setup can directly be placed inside of the vacuum chamber of fusion devices as it is small and immune against high magnetic fields. This enables gas injection close to the plasma periphery with high duty cycles and fast switch on/off times ≲ 0.5 ms. In this work, we present the design details of this new injection system and a systematic characterization of the beam properties as well as the gas flowrates which can be accomplished. The thin and relatively short capillary yields a small divergence of the injected beam with a half opening angle of 20°. The gas box is designed for pre-fill pressures of 10 mbar up to 100 bars and makes a flowrate accessible from 1018 part/s up to 1023 part/s. It hence is a versatile system for both diagnostic as well as fuelling applications. The implementation of this system in ASDEX Upgrade will be described and its application for line ratio spectroscopy on helium will be demonstrated on a selected example.

Turbulence driven poloidal asymmetric parallel flow and current perturbations are studied for tokamak plasmas of circular geometry. Whereas zonal flows can lead to in-out asymmetry of parallel flows and currents via the Pfirsch-Schlüter mechanism, ballooned transport can result in an up-down asymmetry due to the Stringer spin-up mechanism. Measurements of up-down asymmetric parallel current fluctuations occurring during the I-phase in ASDEX Upgrade are not responses to the equilibrium by the Pfirsch-Schlüter current, but can be interpreted as a response to strongly ballooned plasma transport coupled with the Stringer spin-up mechanism. A good agreement of the experimental measured limit-cycle frequencies during I-phase with the Stringer spin-up relaxation frequency is found.