ALBERT

Description: The guiding-center kinetic neoclassical transport code, XGC0 [Chang et al. , Phys. Plasmas 11 , 2649 (2004)], is used to compute the heat fluxes and the heat-load width in the outer divertor plates of Alcator C-Mod and DIII-D tokamaks. The dependence of the width of heat-load fluxes on neoclassical effects, neutral collisions, and anomalous transport is investigated using the XGC0 code. The XGC0 code includes realistic X-point geometry, a neutral source model, the effects of collisions, and a diffusion model for anomalous transport. It is observed that the width of the XGC0 neoclassical heat-load is approximately inversely proportional to the total plasma current I p. The scaling of the width of the divertor heat-load with plasma current is examined for an Alcator C-Mod discharge and four DIII-D discharges. The scaling of the divertor heat-load width with plasma current is found to be weaker in the Alcator C-Mod discharge compared to scaling found in the DIII-D discharges. The effect of neutral collisions on the 1/ I p scaling of heat-load width is shown not to be significant. Although inclusion of poloidally uniform anomalous transport results in a deviation from the 1/ I p scaling, the inclusion of the anomalous transport that is driven by ballooning-type instabilities results in recovering the neoclassical 1/ I p scaling. The Bohm or gyro-Bohm scalings of anomalous transport do not strongly affect the dependence of the heat-load width on plasma current. The inclusion of anomalous transport, in general, results in widening the width of neoclassical divertor heat-load and enhances the neoclassical heat-load fluxes on the divertor plates. Understanding heat transport in the tokamak scrape-off layer plasmas is important for strengthening the basis for predicting divertor conditions in ITER.

Description: An accurate system-bath model to investigate the quantum dynamics of hydrogen atoms chemisorbed on graphene is presented. The system comprises a hydrogen atom and the carbon atom from graphene that forms the covalent bond, and it is described by a previously developed 4D potential energy surface based on density functional theory ab initio data. The bath describes the rest of the carbon lattice and is obtained from an empirical force field through inversion of a classical equilibrium correlation function describing the hydrogen motion. By construction, model building easily accommodates improvements coming from the use of higher level electronic structure theory for the system. Further, it is well suited to a determination of the system-environment coupling by means of ab initio molecular dynamics. This paper details the system-bath modeling and shows its application to the quantum dynamics of vibrational relaxation of a chemisorbed hydrogen atom, which is here investigated at T = 0 K with the help of the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method. Paper II deals with the sticking dynamics.

Description: Following our recent system-bath modeling of the interaction between a hydrogen atom and a graphene surface [Bonfanti et al. , J. Chem. Phys. 143 , 124703 (2015)], we present the results of converged quantum scattering calculations on the activated sticking dynamics. The focus of this study is the collinear scattering on a surface at zero temperature, which is treated with high-dimensional wavepacket propagations with the multi-configuration time-dependent Hartree method. At low collision energies, barrier-crossing dominates the sticking and any projectile that overcomes the barrier gets trapped in the chemisorption well. However, at high collision energies, energy transfer to the surface is a limiting factor, and fast H atoms hardly dissipate their excess energy and stick on the surface. As a consequence, the sticking coefficient is maximum (∼0.65) at an energy which is about one and half larger than the barrier height. Comparison of the results with classical and quasi-classical calculations shows that quantum fluctuations of the lattice play a primary role in the dynamics. A simple impulsive model describing the collision of a classical projectile with a quantum surface is developed which reproduces the quantum results remarkably well for all but the lowest energies, thereby capturing the essential physics of the activated sticking dynamics investigated.

Description: Calibration is a crucial procedure in electron temperature ( T e ) inference from a typical electron cyclotron emission (ECE) diagnostic on tokamaks. Although the calibration provides an important multiplying factor for an individual ECE channel, the parameter Δ T e / T e is independent of any calibration. Since an ECE channel measures the cyclotron emission for a particular flux surface, a non-perturbing change in toroidal magnetic field changes the view of that channel. Hence the calibration-free parameter is a measure of T e gradient. B T -jog technique is presented here which employs the parameter and the raw ECE signals for direct measurement of electron temperature gradient scale length.

Description: Recent experiments on C-mod seeding nitrogen into ohmic plasmas with q 95  = 3.4 found that the seeding greatly reduced long-wavelength (ITG-scale) turbulence. The long-wavelength turbulence that was reduced by the nitrogen seeding was localized to the region of r / a ≈ 0.85 , where the turbulence is well above marginal stability (as evidenced by Q i / Q GB ≫ 1 ). The nonlinear gyrokinetic code GYRO was used to simulate the expected turbulence in these plasmas, and the simulated turbulent density fluctuations and turbulent energy fluxes quantitatively agreed with the experimental measurements both before and after the nitrogen seeding. Unexpectedly, the intrinsic rotation of the plasma was also found to be affected by the nitrogen seeding, in a manner apparently unrelated to a change in the electron-ion collisionality that was proposed by other experiments.

Description: The high-fidelity BOUT++ two-fluid code suite has demonstrated significant recent progress toward integrated multi-scale simulations of tokamak pedestal, including Edge-Localized-Mode (ELM) dynamics, evolution of ELM cycles, and continuous fluctuations, as observed in experiments. Nonlinear ELM simulations show three stages of an ELM event: (1) a linear growing phase; (2) a fast crash phase; and (3) a slow inward turbulence spreading phase lasting until the core heating flux balances the ELM energy loss and the ELM is terminated. A new coupling/splitting model has been developed to perform simulations of multi-scale ELM dynamics. Simulation tracks five ELM cycles for 10 000 Alfvén times for small ELMs. The temporal evolution of the pedestal pressure is similar to that of experimental measurements for the pedestal pressure profile collapses and recovers to a steep gradient during ELM cycles. To validate BOUT++ simulations against experimental data and develop physics understanding of the fluctuation characteristics for different tokamak operation regimes, both quasi-coherent fluctuations (QCFs) in ELMy H-modes and Weakly Coherent Modes in I-modes have been simulated using three dimensional 6-field 2-fluid electromagnetic model. The H-mode simulation results show that (1) QCFs are localized in the pedestal region having a predominant frequency at f ≃ 300 − 400   kHz and poloidal wavenumber at k θ ≃ 0.7   cm − 1 , and propagate in the electron diamagnetic direction in the laboratory frame. The overall signatures of simulation results for QCFs show good agreement with C-Mod and DIII-D measurements. (2) The pedestal profiles giving rise to QCFs are near the marginal instability threshold for ideal peeling-ballooning modes for both C-Mod and DIII-D, while the collisional electromagnetic drift-Alfvén wave appears to be dominant for DIII-D. (3) Particle diffusivity is either smaller than the heat diffusivity for DIII-D or similar to the heat diffusivity for C-Mod. Key I-mode simulation results are that (1) a strong instability exists at n ≥ 20 for resistive ballooning mode and drift-Alfvén wave; (2) the frequency spectrum of nonlinear BOUT++ simulation features a peak around 300 kHz for the mode number n = 20, consistent with a reflectometer measurement at nearby position; (3) the calculated particle diffusivity is larger than the calculated heat diffusivity, which is consistent with a key feature of the I-mode pedestal with no particle barrier.

Description: New experimental observations are reported on the structure and dynamics of short-lived periodic (1, 1) “fishbone”-like oscillations that appear during radio frequency heating and current-drive experiments in tokamak plasmas. For the first time, measurements can directly relate changes in the high energy electrons to the mode onset, saturation, and damping. In the relatively high collisionality of Alcator C-Mod with lower hybrid current drive, the instability appears to be destabilized by the non-resonant suprathermal electron pressure—rather than by wave-particle resonance, rotates toroidally with the plasma and grows independently of the (1, 1) sawtooth crash driven by the thermal plasma pressure.

Description: For the first time, nonlinear gyrokinetic simulations of I-mode plasmas are performed and compared with experiment. I-mode is a high confinement regime, featuring energy confinement similar to H-mode, but without enhanced particle and impurity particle confinement [D. G. Whyte et al. , Nucl. Fusion 50 , 105005 (2010)]. As a consequence of the separation between heat and particle transport, I-mode exhibits several favorable characteristics compared to H-mode. The nonlinear gyrokinetic code GYRO [J. Candy and R. E. Waltz, J Comput. Phys. 186 , 545 (2003)] is used to explore the effects of E × B shear and profile stiffness in I-mode and compare with L-mode. The nonlinear GYRO simulations show that I-mode core ion temperature and electron temperature profiles are more stiff than L-mode core plasmas. Scans of the input E × B shear in GYRO simulations show that E × B shearing of turbulence is a stronger effect in the core of I-mode than L-mode. The nonlinear simulations match the observed reductions in long wavelength density fluctuation levels across the L-I transition but underestimate the reduction of long wavelength electron temperature fluctuation levels. The comparisons between experiment and gyrokinetic simulations for I-mode suggest that increased E × B shearing of turbulence combined with increased profile stiffness are responsible for the reductions in core turbulence observed in the experiment, and that I-mode resembles H-mode plasmas more than L-mode plasmas with regards to marginal stability and temperature profile stiffness.

Description: Measurements of impurities in Alcator C-Mod indicate that in the pedestal region, significant poloidal asymmetries can exist in the impurity density, ion temperature, and main ion density. In light of the observation that ion temperature and electrostatic potential are not constant on a flux surface [Theiler et al ., Nucl. Fusion 54 , 083017 (2014)], a technique based on total pressure conservation to align profiles measured at separate poloidal locations is presented and applied. Gyrokinetic neoclassical simulations with XGCa support the observed large poloidal variations in ion temperature and density, and that the total pressure is approximately constant on a flux surface. With the updated alignment technique, the observed in-out asymmetry in impurity density is reduced from previous publishing [Churchill et al ., Nucl. Fusion 53 , 122002 (2013)], but remains substantial ( n z , H / n z , L ∼ 6 ). Candidate asymmetry drivers are explored, showing that neither non-uniform impurity sources nor localized fluctuation-driven transport are able to explain satisfactorily the impurity density asymmetry. Since impurity density asymmetries are only present in plasmas with strong electron density gradients, and radial transport timescales become comparable to parallel transport timescales in the pedestal region, it is suggested that global transport effects relating to the strong electron density gradients in the pedestal are the main driver for the pedestal in-out impurity density asymmetry.

Description: High-resolution active and passive kink mode studies are conducted in a tokamak with an adjustable ferromagnetic wall near the plasma surface. Ferritic tiles made from 5.6 mm thick Hiperco ® 50 alloy have been mounted on the plasma-facing side of half of the in-vessel movable wall segments in the High Beta Tokamak-Extended Pulse device [D. A. Maurer et al. , Plasma Phys. Controlled Fusion 53 , 074016 (2011)] in order to explore ferritic resistive wall mode stability. Low-activation ferritic steels are a candidate for structural components of a fusion reactor, and these experiments examine MHD stability of plasmas with nearby ferromagnetic material. Plasma-wall separation for alternating ferritic and non-ferritic wall segments is adjusted between discharges without opening the vacuum vessel. Amplification of applied resonant magnetic perturbations and plasma disruptivity are observed to increase when the ferromagnetic wall is close to plasma surface instead of the standard stainless steel wall. Rapidly rotating m / n = 3 / 1 external kink modes have higher growth rates with the nearby ferritic wall. Feedback suppression of kinks is still as effective as before the installation of ferritic material in vessel, in spite of increased mode growth rates.