NSTX operates at low aspect ratio (R/a∼1.3) and high beta (up to 40%), allowing tests of global confinement and local transport properties that have been established from higher aspect ratio devices. NSTX plasmas are heated by up to 7 MW of deuterium neutral beams with preferential electron heating as expected for ITER. Confinement scaling studies indicate a strong B T dependence, with a current dependence that is weaker than that observed at higher aspect ratio. Dimensionless scaling experiments indicate a strong increase of confinement with decreasing collisionality and a weak degradation with beta. The increase of confinement with B T is due to reduced transport in the electron channel, while the improvement with plasma current is due to reduced transport in the ion channel related to the decrease in the neoclassical transport level. Improved electron confinement has been observed in plasmas with strong reversed magnetic shear, showing the existence of an electron internal transport barrier (eITB). The development of the eITB may be associated with a reduction in the growth of microtearing modes in the plasma core. Perturbative studies show that while L-mode plasmas with reversed magnetic shear and an eITB exhibit slow changes of L T e across the profile after the pellet injection, H-mode plasmas with a monotonic q-profile and no eITB show no change in this parameter after pellet injection, indicating the existence of a critical gradient that may be related to the q-profile. Both linear and non-linear simulations indicate the potential importance of ETG modes at the lowest B T . Localized measurements of high-k fluctuations exhibit a sharp decrease in signal amplitude levels across the L-H transition, associated with a decrease in both ion and electron transport, and a decrease in calculated linear microinstability growth rates across a wide k-range, from the ITG/TEM regime up to the ETG regime.

Experiments on trace argon impurity transport in L-mode discharges were performed on Korea superconducting tokamak advanced research (KSTAR) with electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECH). Ar emission was measured by soft x-ray (SXR) arrays and vacuum UV (VUV) diagnostics. A significant reduction in the core Ar emissivity was observed with core ECH. The reduction was the largest with on-axis heating and became smaller with outward heating positions. The diffusivity and convection velocity of Ar were obtained by analysis of the SXR data with the SANCO impurity transport code for the on-axis ECH and the non-ECH shots. In the on-axis ECH case, both diffusivity and convection velocity increased. Furthermore, the convection changed its direction from inward to outward in the plasma core (r/a < 0.3), resulting in a hollow profile of the total Ar density. Together with the reduction in the SXR signals, the hollow impurity profile in the core and the reversal of the convection velocity consistently confirm that ECH can reduce impurity accumulation in the core region. Neoclassical impurity transport and linear stability of micro-turbulence were calculated and discussed in relation to the possible transport mechanism.

A broad sample of fluid models for instability-driven plasma turbulence is surveyed to determine whether saturation involving damped eigenmodes requires special physics or is a common property of plasma turbulence driven by instability. Previous investigations have focused exclusively on turbulence in the core of tokamak discharges. The models surveyed here apply to a wide range of physical mechanisms for instability, turbulent mode coupling, and parameter regimes, with the common modeling feature that the physics has been reduced to a two-field fluid description. All the models have regimes in which damped eigenmodes saturate the instability by damping the fluctuation energy at a rate comparable to the injection rate by the unstable eigenmode. A test function derived from model parameters is found to predict when damped eigenmodes provide saturation. This confirms that a critical condition for saturation by damped eigenmodes is that the damping rate of the damped eigenmode does not greatly exceed the growth rate. For the quadratic dispersion relation of two-field models, this tends to hold in regimes of stronger instability and for regimes with strong gradients and strong diamagnetic frequency. Nonlinear coupling also matters. Strong coupling can overcome the effects of heavy damping, while weak coupling can prevent a damped eigenmode from saturating turbulence even though it is not heavily damped. This study indicates that damped eigenmodes represent a pervasive mechanism for the saturation of plasma instability in fluid descriptions, complementing recent works showing these effects in comprehensive gyrokinetic models.