Diii D Experiments And Modeling Of Core Confinement In Quiescent Double Barrier Plasmas

Download or read book DIII-D Experiments and Modeling of Core Confinement in Quiescent Double Barrier Plasmas written by and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We continue to explore Quiescent Double Barrier (QDB) operation on DIII-D to address issues of critical importance to internal transport barrier (ITB) plasmas. QDB plasmas exhibit both a core transport barrier and a quiescent, H-mode edge barrier. Both experiments and modeling of these plasmas are leading to an increased understanding of this regime and it's potential advantages for advanced-tokamak (AT) burning-plasma operation. These near steady plasma conditions have been maintained on DIII-D for up to 4s, times greater than 35[tau][sub E], and exhibit high performance with [beta][sub N]> 2.5 and neutron production rates S[sub n] [approx] 1 x 10[sup 16]s[sup -1]. Recent experiments have been directed at exploring both the current profile modification effects of electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) and electron cyclotron (ECH) heating-induced changes in temperature, density and impurity profiles. We use model-based analysis to determine the effects of both heating and current drive on the q-profile in these QDB plasmas. Experiments based on predictive modeling achieved a significant modification to the q-profile evolution [1] resulting from the non-inductive current drive effects due to direct ECCD and changes in the bootstrap and neutral beam current drive components. We observe that the injection of EC power inside the barrier region changes the density peaking from n[sub e]/n[sub e] = 2.1 to 1.5 accompanied by a significant reduction in the core carbon and high-Z impurities, nickel and copper.