The optimized, superconducting stellarator Wendelstein 7-X went into operation and delivered first measurement data after 15 years of construction and one year commissioning. Errors in the magnet ...assembly were confirmend to be small. Plasma operation was started with 5 MW electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH) power and five inboard limiters. Core plasma values of Te>8 keV, Ti>2 keV at line-integrated densities n≈3⋅1019 m−2 were achieved, exceeding the original expectations by about a factor of two. Indications for a core-electron-root were found. The energy confinement times are in line with the international stellarator scaling, despite unfavourable wall conditions, i.e. large areas of metal surfaces and particle sources from the limiter close to the plasma volume. Well controlled shorter hydrogen discharges at higher power (4 MW ECRH power for 1 s) and longer discharges at lower power (0.7 MW ECRH power for 6 s) could be routinely established after proper wall conditioning. The fairly large set of diagnostic systems running in the end of the 10 weeks operation campaign provided first insights into expected and unexpected physics of optimized stellarators.
The mechanism governing the impact of the mass isotope on plasma confinement is still one of the main scientific conundrums facing the magnetic fusion community after more than thirty years of ...intense research. We have investigated the properties of local turbulence and long-range correlations in hydrogen and deuterium plasmas in the TEXTOR tokamak. Experimental findings have shown a systematic increasing in the amplitude of long-range correlations during the transition from hydrogen to deuterium dominated plasmas. These results provide the first direct experimental evidence of the importance of multiscale physics for unraveling the physics of the isotope effect in fusion plasmas.
The paper reports on the first measurements of long-range correlations along field lines in the center of ohmic plasmas at TEXTOR. The measurements are performed with correlation reflectometry. For ...the first time the poloidal, toroidal and radial extension of quasi-coherent modes are simultaneously investigated using correlation reflectometry at two poloidally and toroidally separated positions. The experiments also allow the local determination of the toroidal velocity from a combination of delay time estimation and safety factor measurements from the same instrument. The paper investigates whether turbulence and which kind of turbulence, with respect to the frequency range, is aligned along field lines and embedded on iso-density surfaces in ohmic plasmas. It especially addresses the question of the properties of coherent structures in the vicinity of the q = 1 surface by analyzing propagation times and coherence levels from short- and long-range correlations. The results are discussed within the context of quasi-coherent modes as observed at T-10, TEXTOR, Tore Supra and recently JET and which are linked to trapped electron modes. Furthermore, the experiment tries to investigate whether a treatment of turbulence in two dimensions is sufficient or if 3D geometry has to be used for the description of turbulence stimulated transport. This is of importance for the development of turbulence codes and simulations.
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