The net erosion and deposition pattern of carbon from the Test Divertor Unit (TDU) of the stellarator W7-X was determined. Special target elements with marker layers consisting of about 300 nm molybdenum and 5-10 µm carbon on top were used during the operation phase OP 1.2a. The thicknesses of the marker layers were determined by elastic backscattering spectrometry (EBS) using 2.5 MeV protons before and after plasma exposure and laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) on selected target elements after exposure. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used for investigating the surface morphology before and after exposure. Massive erosion of up to 20 µm carbon was observed at the strike line, in total 48±14 g carbon were eroded from the 10 TDUs. The erosion was laterally nonuniform on the micro-scale. Strongly eroded surfaces were considerably smoother as compared to the original material. Only very little deposition of carbon is observed on the TDU: This means that the TDU is a large net erosion source.

The Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) optimized stellarator fusion experiment, which went into operation in 2015, has been operating since 2017 with an un-cooled modular graphite divertor. This allowed first divertor physics studies to be performed at pulse energies up to 80 MJ, as opposed to 4 MJ in the first operation phase, where five inboard limiters were installed instead of a divertor. This, and a number of other upgrades to the device capabilities, allowed extension into regimes of higher plasma density, heating power, and performance overall, e.g. setting a new stellarator world record triple product. The paper focuses on the first physics studies of how the island divertor works. The plasma heat loads arrive to a very high degree on the divertor plates, with only minor heat loads seen on other components, in particular baffle structures built in to aid neutral compression. The strike line shapes and locations change significantly from one magnetic configuration to another, in very much the same way that codes had predicted they would. Strike-line widths are as large as 10 cm, and the wetted areas also large, up to about 1.5 m 2 , which bodes well for future operation phases. Peak local heat loads onto the divertor were in general benign and project below the 10 MW/m 2 limit of the future water-cooled divertor when operated with 10 MW of heating power, with the exception of low-density attached operation in the high-iota Submitted to Nuclear Fusion configuration. The most notable result was the complete (in all 10 divertor units) heat-flux detachment obtained at highdensity operation in hydrogen.

We directly trace the near-and mid-infrared transmission change of a VO 2 thin film during an ultrafast insulator-to-metal transition triggered by high-field multi-terahertz transients. Non-thermal switching into a metastable metallic state is governed solely by the amplitude of the applied terahertz field. In contrast to resonant excitation below the threshold fluence, no signatures of excitonic self-trapping are observed. Our findings are consistent with the generation of spatially separated charge pairs and a cooperative transition into a delocalized metallic state by THz field-induced tunneling. The tunneling process is a condensed-matter analogue of the Schwinger effect in nonlinear quantum electrodynamics. We find good agreement with the pair production formula by replacing the Compton wavelength with an electronic correlation length of 2.1 Å.

Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) is a nearly full-carbon machine with graphite divertors, baffles and shields in Operation Phase 1.2b (OP 1.2b). Divertor spectrometer measurements showed that an amount of helium and oxygen impurities existed in the predominately hydrogen plasma, which resulted in a high carbon impurity level by enhanced physical and chemical sputtering by these impurities in comparison with the pure impinging proton yields. In order to improve the wall conditions, especially to reduce the oxygen content, boronizations were applied in OP1.2b. After the boronization, an oxygen decrease by more than an order of magnitude was observed. Helium disappeared in comparison with OP1.2a due to reduced application of helium wall conditioning after introduction of boronizations. The overall radiation normalized to line integrated density was reduced by a factor of six. In addition, local CH4 injection was applied in the divertor in order to quantify the chemical sputtering by hydrogen on divertor plates. The experimentally determined effective D/XB of the A-X band of CH resulting from CH4 was [ 𝐷 𝑋𝐵 ] 𝐴 2 ∆→𝑋 2 Π 𝐶𝐻 4 →𝐶𝐻 = 16 at Te ≈ 20 eV and ne ≈ 5e18 m -3 . It was applied to determine the hydrocarbon fluxes and further to deduce the particle flux ratio Г CH4 /Г H on divertor plates.

A set of dedicated marker samples consisting of fine-grain graphite as substrate, an interlayer of 0.2–0.4 μm molybdenum (Mo) employed as marker, and a 5–10 μm thick carbon (C) marker layer on top were installed in Wendelstein 7-X (W7-X) to investigate locally the C erosion and deposition. In this study, a set of five individual marker tiles, installed in a vertical divertor element of the test divertor unit in half-module 50, and exposed to about 40 min of plasma predominant in the standard magnetic divertor configuration in the first year of divertor operation in W7-X (OP1.2A), were retrieved from the vessel for post-mortem analysis. Picosecond laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (ps-LIBS) was applied on these marker tiles in order to determine the local erosion/deposition pattern caused by plasma impact. The general erosion/deposition pattern on the vertical target element was studied with the aid of depth-profiling by Mo line emission due to ps-LIBS with the number of applied laser pulses (355 nm, 2.3 J cm−2, 35 ps) at one probing location. Several potential asymmetry factors which avoid a perfect layer-by-layer ablation process in the laser ablations are proposed and discussed when a rough layered structure sample with a rough surface is analysed by the ps-LIBS technique. Thereby, a simulation model was developed to correct the measurement error of the ps-LIBS method caused by the non-perfect rectangle profile of the applied laser beam. The depth resolution of the applied ps-LIBS system was determined by quantification of the laser ablation rates of the different layers and the C substrate which were measured utilising profilometry and cross comparison with the thicknesses of the C and Mo marker layers determined by a combined focused ion beam and scanning electron microscopy technique. For the first time, the erosion/deposition pattern on the vertical target was mapped and quantified by ps-LIBS technique. A relatively wide net erosion zone with a poloidal extend of about 200 mm was identified which can be correlated to the main particle interaction zone at the magnetic strike-line of the dominantly applied standard magnetic divertor configuration. At the position of peak erosion, not only 7.6 × 1019 C atoms/cm2 but also 2 × 1018 Mo atoms/cm2 which results can be extrapolated to total 15 × 1019 C atoms/cm2, were eroded due to plasma fuel particle (H, He) and impurity (O, C) ion impact.