Transport Phenomena in Alcator C-Mod H-Modes

Abstract. Several interesting new results have come from studies of ICRF-heated, H-mode plasmas in Alcator C-Mod. Dimensionless scaling studies have found gyro-Bohm-like transport similar to that reported on other devices; however, the dependence on collisionality was surprisingly strong, with BE −1. Despite high edge temperatures and strong edge pressure gradients, type I edge-localized modes (ELMs) are not observed in C-Mod. Instead we obtain a regime that we have dubbed enhanced D (EDA) which is accompanied by high-frequency density fluctuations. For all H-modes, core gradients were found to increase linearly with edge temperature, suggesting the importance of critical gradient/marginal stability behaviour. Comparisons with the IFS-PPPL model have begun, showing quantitative agreement in some cases. Impurity particle transport was studied via the laser blow-off technique with impurity confinement found to be effectively infinite for ELM-free discharges but reduced into the range 0.1–0.2 s for the EDA plasmas. 1