Impurity transport and bulk ion flow in a mixed collisionality stellarator plasma. (11th October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Newton, S. L.; Helander, P.; Mollén, A.; Smith, H. M.
• Is Part Of: Journal of plasma physics. Volume 83:Number 5(2017)
• Publication Date: 2017-10-11
• Subjects: fusion plasma, -- plasma confinement, -- plasma flows; Plasma (Ionized gases) -- Periodicals; 530.4405
• DOI: 10.1017/S0022377817000745
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-3778

Abstract

Abstract : The accumulation of impurities in the core of magnetically confined plasmas, resulting from standard collisional transport mechanisms, is a known threat to their performance as fusion energy sources. Whilst the axisymmetric tokamak systems have been shown to benefit from the effect of temperature screening, that is an outward flux of impurities driven by the temperature gradient, impurity accumulation in stellarators was thought to be inevitable, driven robustly by the inward pointing electric field characteristic of hot fusion plasmas. We have shown in Helander et al. ( Phys. Rev. Lett., vol. 118, 2017 a, 155002) that such screening can in principle also appear in stellarators, in the experimentally relevant mixed collisionality regime, where a highly collisional impurity species is present in a low collisionality bulk plasma. Details of the analytic calculation are presented here, along with the effect of the impurity on the bulk ion flow, which will ultimately affect the bulk contribution to the bootstrap current.