Turbulent Transport in the Tokamak Edge Plasma and SOL Region

Abstract

In this work, the turbulent transport in the edge plasma and Scrape-Off Layer (SOL) region of IR-T1 tokamak at the presence of biased limiter has been investigated and analyzed. The time and radial evolution of floating potential, electric field and turbulent transport have been measured by using two arrays of the Langmuir probes in both the radial and poloidal directions. The analyses have been done by the Fast Fourier Transport method and spectral features of them are obtained with the help of the standard Auto-Correlation technique and modified covariance power spectral density estimate. The probability distribution function and actual transfer function magnitude of the radial and poloidal turbulent transport (Γ_r and Γ_p) have been investigated and compared in the edge plasma and SOL region. Also the histogram of turbulent transport has been analyzed and compared in the edge and SOL at presence of positive limiter biasing. The results show that in the edge plasma poloidal turbulent transport (Γ_p) is about of 60 % more than SOL region whereas radial turbulent transport (Γ_r) is about of 40 % less. During the application of positive biasing, it was found that Γ_r in the IR-T1 reduces by about 80 % in the edge plasma and 45–50 % in the SOL. Increase of Γ_p is about of 50 % after applied positive biasing in the edge while it increases 70 % nearly, in the SOL. Consequently, the improvement in confinement can be obtained for positive limiter biasing.