Overview of ASDEX Upgrade results

The ASDEX Upgrade programme is directed towards physics input to critical elements of the ITER design and the preparation of ITER operation, as well as addressing physics issues for a future DEMO design. After the finalization of the tungsten coating of the plasma facing components, the re-availability of all flywheel-generators allowed high-power operation with up to 20 MW heating power at I(p) up to 1.2 MA. Implementation of alternative ECRH schemes (140 GHz O2- and X3-mode) facilitated central heating above n(e) = 1.2 x 10(20) m(-3) and low q(95) operation at B(t) = 1.8 T. Central O2-mode heating was successfully used in high P/R discharges with 20 MW total heating power and divertor load control with nitrogen seeding. Improved energy confinement is obtained with nitrogen seeding both for type-I and type-III ELMy conditions. The main contributor is increased plasma temperature, no significant changes in the density profile have been observed. This behaviour may be explained by higher pedestal temperatures caused by ion dilution in combination with a pressure limited pedestal and hollow nitrogen profiles. Core particle transport simulations with gyrokinetic calculations have been benchmarked by dedicated discharges using variations of the ECRH deposition location. The reaction of normalized electron density gradients to variations of temperature gradients and the T(e)/T(i) ratio could be well reproduced. Doppler reflectometry studies at the L-H transition allowed the disentanglement of the interplay between the oscillatory geodesic acoustic modes, turbulent fluctuations and the mean equilibrium E x B flow in the edge negative E(r) well region just inside the separatrix. Improved pedestal diagnostics revealed also a refined picture of the pedestal transport in the fully developed H-mode type-I ELM cycle. Impurity ion transport turned out to be neoclassical in between ELMs. Electron and energy transport remain anomalous, but exhibit different recovery time scales after an ELM. After recovery of the pre-ELM profiles, strong fluctuations develop in the gradients of n(e) and T(e). The occurrence of the next ELM cannot be explained by the local current diffusion time scale, since this turns out to be too short. Fast ion losses induced by shear Alfven eigenmodes have been investigated by time-resolved energy and pitch angle measurements. This allowed the separation of the convective and diffusive loss mechanisms

Overview of ASDEX Upgrade results

The ASDEX Upgrade programme is directed towards physics input to critical elements of the ITER design and the preparation of ITER operation, as well as addressing physics issues for a future DEMO design. After the finalization of the tungsten coating of the plasma facing components, the re-availability of all flywheel-generators allowed high-power operation with up to 20 MW heating power at I(p) up to 1.2 MA. Implementation of alternative ECRH schemes (140 GHz O2- and X3-mode) facilitated central heating above n(e) = 1.2 x 10(20) m(-3) and low q(95) operation at B(t) = 1.8 T. Central O2-mode heating was successfully used in high P/R discharges with 20 MW total heating power and divertor load control with nitrogen seeding. Improved energy confinement is obtained with nitrogen seeding both for type-I and type-III ELMy conditions. The main contributor is increased plasma temperature, no significant changes in the density profile have been observed. This behaviour may be explained by higher pedestal temperatures caused by ion dilution in combination with a pressure limited pedestal and hollow nitrogen profiles. Core particle transport simulations with gyrokinetic calculations have been benchmarked by dedicated discharges using variations of the ECRH deposition location. The reaction of normalized electron density gradients to variations of temperature gradients and the T(e)/T(i) ratio could be well reproduced. Doppler reflectometry studies at the L-H transition allowed the disentanglement of the interplay between the oscillatory geodesic acoustic modes, turbulent fluctuations and the mean equilibrium E x B flow in the edge negative E(r) well region just inside the separatrix. Improved pedestal diagnostics revealed also a refined picture of the pedestal transport in the fully developed H-mode type-I ELM cycle. Impurity ion transport turned out to be neoclassical in between ELMs. Electron and energy transport remain anomalous, but exhibit different recovery time scales after an ELM. After recovery of the pre-ELM profiles, strong fluctuations develop in the gradients of n(e) and T(e). The occurrence of the next ELM cannot be explained by the local current diffusion time scale, since this turns out to be too short. Fast ion losses induced by shear Alfven eigenmodes have been investigated by time-resolved energy and pitch angle measurements. This allowed the separation of the convective and diffusive loss mechanisms

Overview of ASDEX Upgrade results

The ASDEX Upgrade programme is directed towards physics input to critical elements of the ITER design and the preparation of ITER operation, as well as addressing physics issues for a future DEMO design. After the finalization of the tungsten coating of the plasma facing components, the re-availability of all flywheel-generators allowed high-power operation with up to 20 MW heating power at I(p) up to 1.2 MA. Implementation of alternative ECRH schemes (140 GHz O2- and X3-mode) facilitated central heating above n(e) = 1.2 x 10(20) m(-3) and low q(95) operation at B(t) = 1.8 T. Central O2-mode heating was successfully used in high P/R discharges with 20 MW total heating power and divertor load control with nitrogen seeding. Improved energy confinement is obtained with nitrogen seeding both for type-I and type-III ELMy conditions. The main contributor is increased plasma temperature, no significant changes in the density profile have been observed. This behaviour may be explained by higher pedestal temperatures caused by ion dilution in combination with a pressure limited pedestal and hollow nitrogen profiles. Core particle transport simulations with gyrokinetic calculations have been benchmarked by dedicated discharges using variations of the ECRH deposition location. The reaction of normalized electron density gradients to variations of temperature gradients and the T(e)/T(i) ratio could be well reproduced. Doppler reflectometry studies at the L-H transition allowed the disentanglement of the interplay between the oscillatory geodesic acoustic modes, turbulent fluctuations and the mean equilibrium E x B flow in the edge negative E(r) well region just inside the separatrix. Improved pedestal diagnostics revealed also a refined picture of the pedestal transport in the fully developed H-mode type-I ELM cycle. Impurity ion transport turned out to be neoclassical in between ELMs. Electron and energy transport remain anomalous, but exhibit different recovery time scales after an ELM. After recovery of the pre-ELM profiles, strong fluctuations develop in the gradients of n(e) and T(e). The occurrence of the next ELM cannot be explained by the local current diffusion time scale, since this turns out to be too short. Fast ion losses induced by shear Alfven eigenmodes have been investigated by time-resolved energy and pitch angle measurements. This allowed the separation of the convective and diffusive loss mechanisms

Overview of ASDEX Upgrade results

The ASDEX Upgrade programme is directed towards physics input to critical elements of the ITER design and the preparation of ITER operation, as well as addressing physics issues for a future DEMO design. After the finalization of the tungsten coating of the plasma facing components, the re-availability of all flywheel-generators allowed high-power operation with up to 20 MW heating power at I(p) up to 1.2 MA. Implementation of alternative ECRH schemes (140 GHz O2- and X3-mode) facilitated central heating above n(e) = 1.2 x 10(20) m(-3) and low q(95) operation at B(t) = 1.8 T. Central O2-mode heating was successfully used in high P/R discharges with 20 MW total heating power and divertor load control with nitrogen seeding. Improved energy confinement is obtained with nitrogen seeding both for type-I and type-III ELMy conditions. The main contributor is increased plasma temperature, no significant changes in the density profile have been observed. This behaviour may be explained by higher pedestal temperatures caused by ion dilution in combination with a pressure limited pedestal and hollow nitrogen profiles. Core particle transport simulations with gyrokinetic calculations have been benchmarked by dedicated discharges using variations of the ECRH deposition location. The reaction of normalized electron density gradients to variations of temperature gradients and the T(e)/T(i) ratio could be well reproduced. Doppler reflectometry studies at the L-H transition allowed the disentanglement of the interplay between the oscillatory geodesic acoustic modes, turbulent fluctuations and the mean equilibrium E x B flow in the edge negative E(r) well region just inside the separatrix. Improved pedestal diagnostics revealed also a refined picture of the pedestal transport in the fully developed H-mode type-I ELM cycle. Impurity ion transport turned out to be neoclassical in between ELMs. Electron and energy transport remain anomalous, but exhibit different recovery time scales after an ELM. After recovery of the pre-ELM profiles, strong fluctuations develop in the gradients of n(e) and T(e). The occurrence of the next ELM cannot be explained by the local current diffusion time scale, since this turns out to be too short. Fast ion losses induced by shear Alfven eigenmodes have been investigated by time-resolved energy and pitch angle measurements. This allowed the separation of the convective and diffusive loss mechanisms

Overview of ASDEX Upgrade results

The medium size divertor tokamak ASDEX Upgrade (major and minor radii 1.65 m and 0.5 m, respectively, magnetic-field strength 2.5 T) possesses flexible shaping and versatile heating and current drive systems. Recently the technical capabilities were extended by increasing the electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) power, by installing 2 × 8 internal magnetic perturbation coils, and by improving the ion cyclotron range of frequency compatibility with the tungsten wall. With the perturbation coils, reliable suppression of large type-I edge localized modes (ELMs) could be demonstrated in a wide operational window, which opens up above a critical plasma pedestal density. The pellet fuelling efficiency was observed to increase which gives access to H-mode discharges with peaked density profiles at line densities clearly exceeding the empirical Greenwald limit. Owing to the increased ECRH power of 4 MW, H-mode discharges could be studied in regimes with dominant electron heating and low plasma rotation velocities, i.e. under conditions particularly relevant for ITER. The ion-pressure gradient and the neoclassical radial electric field emerge as key parameters for the transition. Using the total simultaneously available heating power of 23 MW, high performance discharges have been carried out where feed-back controlled radiative cooling in the core and the divertor allowed the divertor peak power loads to be maintained below 5 MW m −2 . Under attached divertor conditions, a multi-device scaling expression for the power-decay length was obtained which is independent of major radius and decreases with magnetic field resulting in a decay length of 1 mm for ITER. At higher densities and under partially detached conditions, however, a broadening of the decay length is observed. In discharges with density ramps up to the density limit, the divertor plasma shows a complex behaviour with a localized high-density region in the inner divertor before the outer divertor detaches. Turbulent transport is studied in the core and the scrape-off layer (SOL). Discharges over a wide parameter range exhibit a close link between core momentum and density transport. Consistent with gyro-kinetic calculations, the density gradient at half plasma radius determines the momentum transport through residual stress and thus the central toroidal rotation. In the SOL a close comparison of probe data with a gyro-fluid code showed excellent agreement and points to the dominance of drift waves. Intermittent structures from ELMs and from turbulence are shown to have high ion temperatures even at large distances outside the separatrix

Recent ASDEX upgrade research in support of ITER and DEMO

Recent experiments on the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak aim at improving the physics base for ITER and DEMO to aid the machine design and prepare efficient operation. Type I edge localized mode (ELM) mitigation using resonant magnetic perturbations (RMPs) has been shown at low pedestal collisionality (nu(*)(ped) < 0.4). In contrast to the previous high nu* regime, suppression only occurs in a narrow RMP spectral window, indicating a resonant process, and a concomitant confinement drop is observed due to a reduction of pedestal top density and electron temperature. Strong evidence is found for the ion heat flux to be the decisive element for the L-H power threshold. A physics based scaling of the density at which the minimum P-LH occurs indicates that ITER could take advantage of it to initiate H-mode at lower density than that of the final Q = 10 operational point. Core density fluctuation measurements resolved in radius and wave number show that an increase of R/L-Te introduced by off-axis electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) mainly increases the large scale fluctuations. The radial variation of the fluctuation level is in agreement with simulations using the GENE code. Fast particles are shown to undergo classical slowing down in the absence of large scale magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) events and for low heating power, but show signs of anomalous radial redistribution at large heating power, consistent with a broadened off-axis neutral beam current drive current profile under these conditions. Neoclassical tearing mode (NTM) suppression experiments using electron cyclotron current drive (ECCD) with feedback controlled deposition have allowed to test several control strategies for ITER, including automated control of (3,2) and (2,1) NTMs during a single discharge. Disruption mitigation studies using massive gas injection (MGI) can show an increased fuelling efficiency with high field side injection, but a saturation of the fuelling efficiency is observed at high injected mass as needed for runaway electron suppression. Large locked modes can significantly decrease the fuelling efficiency and increase the asymmetry of radiated power during MGI mitigation. Concerning power exhaust, the partially detached ITER divertor scenario has been demonstrated at P-sep/R = 10 MW m(-1) in ASDEX Upgrade, with a peak time averaged target load around 5 MW m(-2), well consistent with the component limits for ITER. Developing this towards DEMO, full detachment was achieved at P-sep/R = 7 MW m(-1) and stationary discharges with core radiation fraction of the order of DEMO requirements (70% instead of the 30% needed for ITER) were demonstrated. Finally, it remains difficult to establish the standard ITER Q = 10 scenario at low q(95) = 3 in the all-tungsten (all-W) ASDEX Upgrade due to the observed poor confinement at low beta(N). This is mainly due to a degraded pedestal performance and hence investigations at shifting the operational point to higher beta(N) by lowering the current have been started. At higher q(95), pedestal performance can be recovered by seeding N-2 as well as CD4, which is interpreted as improved pedestal stability due to the decrease of bootstrap current with increasing Z(eff). Concerning advanced scenarios, the upgrade of ECRH power has allowed experiments with central ctr-ECCD to modify the q-profile in improved H-mode scenarios, showing an increase in confinement at still good MHD stability with flat elevated q-profiles at values between 1.5 and 2