Westerhof, E. (ORCID:0000000207499399)

DOE OSTI2026

Systematic multi-machine analysis of the exhaust time-dependent behavior in tokamaks

The understanding of the time-scales and associated transient behavior of fusion exhaust plasmas plays a crucial role in its dynamic modeling and its control. This work presents an overview of experimental investigations of the exhaust dynamics in TCV, MAST-U, ASDEX-Upgrade, WEST, DIII-D, and JET. From the presented experiments, a clear picture arises on properties of the exhaust dynamics across machines. Particularly, we observe that the scrape-off layer equilibrates on fast time-scales ($>$ 70 Hz) and that exhaust dynamics measured in response to gas valve modulations mostly behave smoothly and linearly, with similarities across devices, across scenarios (H-mode, L-mode), injected species, and injection locations. The measurements presented have formed the basis for systematic exhaust control on the considered devices. We now present this database for the essential validation of dynamic exhaust models for reactor design and control.

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DOE OSTI2023

Quantifying electron cyclotron power deposition broadening in DIII-D and the potential consequences for the ITER EC system

Abstract The injection of electron cyclotron (EC) waves fulfills a number of important tasks in nuclear fusion devices for which detailed knowledge of the spatial power deposition profile is critical. This deposition profile is commonly determined using forward models such as beam or ray tracing. Recent numerical and experimental studies have shown that small-angle scattering of the EC beam as it passes through the turbulent plasma edge can cause significant broadening of the effective deposition profile, leading to considerable underestimation of the deposition width by forward methods. However, traditional inverse methods to determine the deposition profile from measurements overestimate the deposition profile width due to transport broadening. In this work, we implement three novel methods to resolve the EC power deposition profile from measurements that counteract transport broadening by simultaneously resolving transport and power deposition. We validate their assumptions and compare the results from these methods to the traditional break-in-slope method as well as to the TORAY ray-tracing code in a set of DIII-D discharges spanning five different confinement modes. We show that the four different inverse methods, novel and established, paint a consistent picture of deposition broadening. Specifically, we show that the measured power deposition profile is between 1.6 and 3.6 times wider than the TORAY profiles. Moreover, we show the considerable consequences that this level of broadening can have for ITER.

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY↗