Transport of Neutrals in Scrape‐Off Layer Plasmas: Autoregressive Beta Process to Describe Plasma Density and Temperature Fluctuations

Abstract

Improving the description of the far scrape-off layer (SOL) in current edge code suites such as SOLPS is the subject of current efforts, given the importance of main chamber plasma wall interactions (first wall recycling and sputtering) in the design and operation of tokamaks. One of the specific features of the far SOL is the large amplitude of turbulent fluctuations. Neutral particles (atom and molecules) are affected by these fluctuations through the rates of atomic physics processes. In accordance with experimentally measured PDF (probability density function) for both the plasma density and temperature fluctuations, ne and Te are modeled using a Beta PDF. Space and time correlations are accounted for by using an autogressive process. The effects of fluctuations on the neutral atoms penetration depth, as well as on the beryllium sputtering yield are discussed.