On the mechanisms governing gas penetration into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection

A new 1D radial fluid code, IMAGINE, is used to simulate the penetration of gas into a tokamak plasma during a massive gas injection (MGI). The main result is that the gas is in general strongly braked as it reaches the plasma, due to mechanisms related to charge exchange and (to a smaller extent) recombination. As a result, only a fraction of the gas penetrates into the plasma. Also, a shock wave is created in the gas which propagates away from the plasma, braking and compressing the incoming gas. Simulation results are quantitatively consistent, at least in terms of orders of magnitude, with experimental data for a D 2 MGI into a JET Ohmic plasma. Simulations of MGI into the background plasma surrounding a runaway electron beam show that if the background electron density is too high, the gas may not penetrate, suggesting a possible explanation for the recent results of Reux et al in JET (2015 Nucl. Fusion 55 093013)

Observation of enhanced ion particle transport in mixed H/D isotope plasmas on JET

Particle transport in tokamak plasmas has been intensively studied in the past, particularly in relation to density peaking and the presence of anomalous inward particle convection in L- and H-modes. While in the L-mode case the presence of the anomalous inward pinch has previously been unambiguously demonstrated, particle transport in the H-mode was unclear. The main difficulty of such studies is that particle diffusion and convection could not be measured independently in steady-state conditions in the presence of a core particle flux. Therefore, it is usually not possible to separate the transport effect(inward convection), from the source effect (slow diffusion of particles introduced to the plasma core by neutral beam injection heating). In this work we describe experiments done on JET with mixtures of two hydrogenic isotopes: H and D. It is demonstrated that in the case of several ion species, convection and diffusion can be separated in a steady plasma without implementation of perturbative techniques such as gas puff modulation. Previous H-mode density peaking studies suggested that for this relatively high electron collisionality plasma scenario, the observed density gradient is mostly driven by particle source and low particle diffusivity D < 0.5 ∗ χ eff. Transport coefficients derived from observation of the isotope profiles in the new experiments far exceed that value - ion particle diffusion is found to be as high as D 2 ∗ χ eff, combined with a strong inward convection. Apparent disagreement with previous findings was explained by significantly faster transport of ion components with respect to the electrons, which could not be observed in a single main ion species plasma. This conclusion is confirmed by quasilinear gyrokinetic simulations

X-Ray Absorption spectroscopy from H-Passivated Porous Si and Oxidized Si Nanocrystals

AbstractQuantum confinement in nanoscale Si structures is widely believed to be responsible for the visible luminescence observed from anodically etched porous silicon (por-Si), but little is known about the actual size or shape of these structures. Extended x-ray absorption fine structure data from a wide variety of por-Si samples show significantly reduced average Si coordination numbers due to the sizable contribution of surface-coordinated H. (The H/Si ratios, as large as 1.2, were independently confirmed by ir-absorption and α-recoil measurements.) The Si coordinations imply very large surface/volume ratios, enabling the average Si structures to be identified as crystalline particles (not wires) whose dimensions are typically &lt;15 Å. Comparison of the size-dependent peak luminescence energies with those of oxidized Si nanocrystals, whose shapes are known, shows remarkable agreement. Furthermore, near-edge x-ray absorption fine structure measurements of the nanocrystals shows the outer oxide and interfacial suboxide layers to be constant over a wide range of nanocrystal sizes. The combination of these results effectively rules out surface species as being responsible for the observed visible luminescence in por-Si, and strongly supports quantum confinement as the dominant mechanism occurring in Si particles which are substantially smaller than previously reported or proposed.</jats:p