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Title: Access to a New Plasma Edge State with High Density and Pressures using Quiescent H-mode

Technical Report ·
DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1172635· OSTI ID:1172635
 [1];  [2];  [2];  [3];  [2];  [1];  [4];  [5];  [1];  [2]
  1. Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
  2. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
  3. Lawrence Livermore National Lab. (LLNL), Livermore, CA (United States)
  4. ITER Organization, St. Paul Lez Durance (France)
  5. Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI (United States)

A path to a new high performance regime has been discovered in tokamaks that could improve the attractiveness of a fusion reactor. Experiments on DIII-D using a quiescent H-mode edge have navigated a valley of improved edge peeling-ballooning stability that opens up with strong plasma shaping at high density, leading to a doubling of the edge pressure over standard edge localized mode (ELM)ing H-mode at these parameters. The thermal energy confinement time increases both as a result of the increased pedestal height and improvements in the core transport and reduced low-k turbulence. Calculations of the pedestal height and width as a function of density using constraints imposed by peeling-ballooning and kinetic-ballooning theory are in quantitative agreement with the measurements.

Research Organization:
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE Office of Science (SC), Fusion Energy Sciences (FES)
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-09CH11466
OSTI ID:
1172635
Report Number(s):
PPPL-5043
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English