EFDA-JET-PR(10)40

Momentum Losses by Charge Exchange with Neutral Particles in H-Mode Discharges at JET

The effect of a neutral density background on the toroidal angular momentum and kinetic energy profiles has been investigated in JET. Under equivalent conditions but with increasing gas fuelling during the flat top phase, it has been observed that both the edge rotation and temperature decrease. The increase in electron density was not sufficient to compensate the rotation and temperature loss such that both energy and momentum confinement times are significantly reduced. The ELM behaviour is observed to be significantly affected by the increased neutral influx. A simple 1.5D fluid model has been used to qualitative capture the neutral transport response within the plasma, followed by a forward model of the passive charge-exchange emission of carbon to obtain a corrected radial neutral density profile. It has been found that the neutral density reduces sharply over the edge region, with similar edge magnitudes in both the non-fuelled (G0/ne~1.2ms-1) and maximum fuelled case (G0/ne~2.5ms-1). Discharges with reversed-B operation exhibited even higher normalised neutral fluxes related to first orbit effects and increased wall interactions. Over the full neutral influx range, a decrease in pedestal thermal mach number from 0.25 to 0.14 was observed. Large neutral penetration up to the pedestal top (r/a~0.9) due to multiple charge-exchange interactions is obtained from the interpretive model. Under these multiple neutral-ion interactions, the impact on their associated losses are much larger for angular momentum compared to the thermal energy. The drag torque was seen to increase up to 10% of the total input torque, while energy losses appeared to be smaller. The magnitude of this sink by neutrals was comparable to torque required (30-50%) to explain the discrepancy between the energy and momentum confinement.
Name Size  
EFDP10040 1.08 Mb