Experiments on steady state particle control in Tore Supra and DIII-D

Particle control is playing an increasingly important role in tokamak plasma performance. The present paper discusses particle control of hydrogen/deuterium by wall pumping on graphite or carbonized surfaces, as well as by external exhaust with pumped limiters and pumped divertors. Wall pumping is ultimately a transient effect and by itself not suitable for steady state particle exhaust. Therefore, external exhaust techniques with pumped divertors and limiters are being developed. How wall pumping phenomena interact and correlate with these inherently steady state, external exhaust techniques, is not well known to date. In the present paper, the processes involved in wall pumping and in external pumping are investigated in an attempt to evaluate the effect of external exhaust on wall pumping. Some of the key elements of this analysis are: (1) charge-exchange fluxes to the wall play a crucial role in the core-wall particle dynamics, (2) the recycling fluxes of thermal molecules have a high probability of ionization in the scrape-off layer, (3) thermal particles originating from the wall, which are ionized within the scrape-off layer, can be directly exhausted, thus providing a direct path between wall and exhaust which can be used to control the wall inventory. This way, the wall can be kept in a continuous pumping state in the sense that it continuously absorbs energetic particles and releases thermal molecules which are then removed by the external exhaust mechanism. While most of the ingredients of this analysis have been observed individually before, the present evaluation is an attempt to correlate effects of wall recycling and external exhaust.