• Energy Research

The impact of re-absorption of the deuterium Lyman series emission was addressed in inferring divertor plasma conditions from Balmer series emission with 2D spectroscopic camera analysis during detachment in JET L-mode plasmas. The previously presented methodology was amended by modifying the standard photon emission coefficients and ionization and recombination rate coefficients of the ADAS database to consider the re-population of excited states due to Lyman opacity. This resulted in the estimate for the atomic density near the outer strike point to decrease by up to 75% at the onset of detachment at strike point temperatures of 1.0–3.0 eV with respect to the strongly overestimated previously obtained values, whereas the estimated electron temperature and density were unaffected by the opacity correction within the scatter of the data and only a moderate reduction by up to 20% was observed in the estimate for the molecularly induced fraction of the Balmer emission. No noticeable change was seen in the ionization rate, calculated from the estimated outer strike point conditions, due to the decrease in the atomic density estimate compensating for the increased values of the opacity-corrected ADAS rate coefficients for ionization. In detached conditions at 0.5–1.0 eV, 25%–35% lower recombination rates were provided by the opacity-corrected model. The observed effects on the experimental analysis were supported by a corresponding synthetic analysis based on EDGE2D-EIRENE simulations.

Measurements of Balmer-alpha (B-α) and Balmer-gamma (B-γ), where B = H, D, or T isotopes of hydrogen, emission across the low-field side (LFS) divertor in JET ITER-like Wall (ILW), low-confinement mode (L-mode) plasma indicate that the divertor plasma was more strongly detached in deuterium, tritium and deuterium–tritium than in hydrogen plasmas. These measurements are consistent with the lower degree of detachment in hydrogen versus tritium plasmas inferred from Langmuir probes (Groth et al., 2023) [1]. The ratio of B-γ to B-α is a suitable indicator of high density/low temperature conditions because B-α emission is dominated by electron impact excitation with a small electron–ion recombination component regardless of electron temperature and density (for conditions in tokamak plasmas) whilst for B-γ the recombination component increases and the excitation component decreases as the electron temperature decreases and the electron density increases. Within the uncertainty of the measurements, the electron density at the low-field side separatrix and the power crossing the separatrix are similar to permit these comparisons. The B-©/B-α ratio is well correlated with the onset of detachment as measured by Langmuir probes (McCracken et al., 1998; Groth et al., 2023). The ratios of B-γ and B-α varied between 0.005 and 0.035 for low-recycling, high-recycling and partially detached conditions, and were 60–70 % higher in partially detached hydrogen than in tritium plasmas. In contrast, the difference between deuterium, tritium and 40–60 % deuterium–tritium is within 10 % and thus within the uncertainties of the measurements. Profiles of the B-α and B-γ emission was measured with two filtered CCDs connected to the visible lost light leg of JET’s mirror link spectroscopy system (Meigs et al., 2010; Lomanowski et al., 2014)[4,5]. Spatially (radial) narrower B-α profiles were measured with increasing isotope mass, while similarly broadened B-γ profiles were measured.

Nuclear materials and energy 37, 101521 - (2023). doi:10.1016/j.nme.2023.101521 Published by Elsevier, Amsterdam [u.a.]

Tungsten sputtering rates and density profiles predicted using the edge plasma codes EDGE2D-EIRENE and DIVIMP are found to agree within a factor of 4 with measurements of neutral and singly-ionized W spectral line emission in the JET low-field side (LFS) divertor, and within a factor of 2 with SXR, VUV, and bolometric calculations of the W density in the main plasma. The edge plasma W predictions are extended to the core plasma using JINTRAC integrated core-edge modelling. Prompt redeposition of W is identified as the primary reason for the discrepancy between predicted and measured W emission in the divertor. The studied plasmas include attached divertor conditions in L-mode and type-I ELMy H-mode plasmas typical for JET. To more accurately reproduce the spectroscopically inferred W sputtering rates in EDGE2D-EIRENE, imposing the experimentally observed Be concentration of order 0.5% in the divertor is necessary. However, the W density in the main plasma is predicted to be insensitive to whether or not W is sputtered by Be at the divertor targets. Instead, the majority of the predicted core W originated in L-mode from sputtering due to fast D charge-exchange atoms at the W-coated tiles above the LFS divertor, and in H-mode due to D and W ions at the targets during ELMs.

For JET L-mode plasmas in low-recycling conditions (electron temperature at the outer strike point, Te,ot≳30eV), SOLPS-ITER simulations agree within the error bars for the experimental profiles at the low-field side (LFS) divertor target. The peak Balmer-α (Dα) emission in the LFS divertor agrees within the error bars of the KS3 filterscope diagnostic, but is approximately 30% lower than the peak value of the KT1 spectrometer. Simulations have been performed with fluid, kinetic, and hybrid models for the neutrals. The large fluid-kinetic discrepancies of more than a factor 2 are successfully corrected by using a hybrid fluid-kinetic approach, for which kinetic atoms are transferred to the fluid population when the local Knudsen number of the atom becomes smaller than a user-defined transition Knudsen number Knt. The hybrid-kinetic discrepancies are limited to a few % for Knt≤100. When increasing the upstream density to high-recycling conditions, at the onset of detachment (Te,ot≈5eV), the simulations predict more than a factor 2 lower peak ion saturation current to the LFS divertor than the experiments. Also the Dα emission is underpredicted with approximately a factor 2. For these high-recycling conditions, the fluid-kinetic discrepancies are limited to maximum 50%, which are again corrected by using the hybrid approach.

Spectroscopic measurements of the hydrogenic Balmer-α and Balmer-γ line emission in JET-ILW low-confinement mode (L-mode) deuterium plasmas are used to assess the onset of volume recombination in the low-field side (LFS) divertor. The evolution of the EDGE2D-EIRENE predicted Balmer-γ to Balmer-α emission ratio from low-recycling to detached conditions is in qualitative agreement with the measured ratio. In low-recycling conditions the EDGE2D-EIRENE predicted line-emission is within 30% of measured emission, in high-recycling within 20%t, and in detached conditions lower by a factor of 2.5.