Effects of flux-surface impurity density variation on collisional transport in stellarators

Effects of flux-surface impurity density variation on collisional transport in stellarators

Effects of flux-surface impurity density variation on collisional transport in stellarators 150 150 UKAEA Opendata
UKAEA-CCFE-PR(18)44

Effects of flux-surface impurity density variation on collisional transport in stellarators

High-Z impurities in magnetic confinement devices are prone to develop density variations on the fluux-surface, which can significantly affect their transport. In this paper, we generalize earlier analytic stellarator calculations of the neoclassical radial impurity flux in the mixed-collisionality regime (collisional impurity and low-collisionality bulk ions) to include the effect of such fluux-surface variations. We find that only in the homogeneous density case is the transport of highly collisional impurities (in the Pfirsch-Schluter regime) independent of the radial electric field. We study these effects for a Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) vacuum field, with simple analytic models for the potential perturbation, under the assumption that the impurity density is given by a Boltzmann response to a perturbed potential. In the W7-X case studied, we find that larger amplitude potential perturbations cause the radial electric field to dominate the transport of the impurities. In addition, we find that classical impurity transport can be larger than the neoclassical transport in W7-X.

Collection:
Journals
Journal:
Journal of Plasma Physics
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Published date:
23/08/2018