The accumulation of tungsten impurities measured in a KSTAR experiment was analyzed theoretically using a drift-kinetic code, NEO, to determine the contribution of neoclassical transport. According to the NEO simulation results, there is a certain value of impurity toroidal rotation speed maximizing the neoclassical inward convection. The inward convection decreases or the outward convection increases as the rotation increases only beyond the speed value. The non-monotonic dependency of the neoclassical convection on the rotation is analyzed by the several coefficients for many profile effects, including ion and electron profiles. The dependency of the coefficients for the main ion density gradient on the rotation is different from that for the temperature gradient, so it results in the amplification of the temperature screening beyond the certain value of the rotation. In the KSTAR case with high toroidal rotation of the tungsten (around Mach number 4.5), only in the mid-radius does the rotation reduce the inward impurity particle convection or change the inward convection to the outward convection. Thus, the rotation is a useful tool to control the impurity accumulation conditionally. The favorable condition occurs only for high rotation, which significantly depends on the radius and the collisionality due to the complicated non-monotonic dependency of the convection on the rotation speed.

Density ramps with ion grad B drift directed into lower single null KSTAR L-mode plasmas are associated with a simultaneous and abrupt reduction of the divertor particle flux on both low- and high-field-side targets when the mid-plane line averaged electron density reaches a given level. Target embedded Langmuir probe signals show a clear “cliff edge” behavior similar to that observed in the divertor target electron temperature in DIII-D H-mode plasmas. The collapse of the particle flux is observed along the whole divertor target area (from private flux region to the far SOL). The critical upstream density of this target flux cliff is invariant under fuel gas throughput modulation. The transition along the cliff occurs in tens of milliseconds. With the cliff, carbon impurities and deuterium neutrals transported through the X-point to the core produce a strong radiation spot near the X-point, seen on bolometric signals, and increase the upstream density. The experimental observations are consistent with time-dependent SOLPS-ITER simulations, which also demonstrate an abrupt transition of the target flux and upstream density with the increase in X-point radiation. The timescale of the cliff predicted by SOLPS-ITER is consistent with the experiment, although, it is influenced by gas throughput or time-dependent numerical methods. In the L-mode phase space of separatrix electron density and temperature, branches are divided based on target temperature, because the latter is strongly coupled to the radiation front and ionization front due to the monotonic characteristic of the parallel electron temperature distribution. Since the H-mode condition operates at a much higher upstream density and electron temperature in phase space, dissipation from sputtered carbon alone leads to the density limit before reaching the X-point radiation condition. This is therefore consistent with the fact that cliffs have never been observed in H-mode KSTAR experiments.

In this study, we demonstrate argon-seeded discharges that exhibited a detached divertor during the full suppression and mitigation of edge localized modes (ELMs) by an ITER-like, three-row resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) configuration in KSTAR. During the ELM suppression phase, the peak heat flux on the divertor target was successfully reduced from 1.6 MW/m2 to 0.5 MW/m2 via argon seeding. Further, the ion saturation current densities corresponding to the particle fluxes on both targets were reduced by more than 50%. During the RMP grassy-ELM regime, a further reduction to 0.1 MW/m2 in the divertor heat load was successfully achieved. A highly localized radiation zone near the x-point was also observed during divertor detachment. The calculated degree of detachment (DoD) based on the two-point model increased to levels of approximately 3 and 2.3 for the outer target and inner target cases, respectively. These results provide valuable information regarding the effect of mid-Z impurities on RMP-detachment-compatible discharges.

We analyze the poloidal distribution of impurity ions, such as C V, C VI and O VIII, in fast rotating KSTAR plasmas using the impurity emission lines in the 1–7 nm wavelength range obtained from the space-resolved extreme ultra violet spectrometer. This is aided particularly by a new tomographic reconstruction technique with limited viewing angles. The vacuum and extreme ultraviolet spectrometer system at ITER and its prototypes installed at KSTAR are one of the main diagnostic systems to monitor the impurity species in fusion plasmas; however, they have an insufficient field of view to utilize the conventional reconstruction method. The new algorithm developed in this work considers a curvilinear grid of pixels mapped onto the magnetic equilibrium and a weight factor considering toroidal rotational effect on impurity species. Validation tests with poloidally asymmetric images of synthetic plasma demonstrate that this method is highly useful for emission diagnostics that have a narrow field of view. The experimental results of the spatially resolved spectra from KSTAR plasma clearly show that even the light impurities such as carbon and oxygen are significantly affected by the toroidal rotation. Accordingly, the method is expected to be utilized for estimating the poloidal density profile of each charge state of an impurity species, which will play a key role in impurity transport studies.