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Generalized collision operator for fast electrons interacting with partially ionized impurities

Part of: Focus on Fusion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 November 2018

L. Hesslow Open the ORCID record for L. Hesslow [Opens in a new window] ,
O. Embréus Open the ORCID record for O. Embréus [Opens in a new window] ,
M. Hoppe ,
T. C. DuBois Open the ORCID record for T. C. DuBois [Opens in a new window] ,
G. Papp ,
M. Rahm  and
T. Fülöp Open the ORCID record for T. Fülöp [Opens in a new window]
L. Hesslow*
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
O. Embréus
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
M. Hoppe
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
T. C. DuBois
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
G. Papp
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, D-85748 Garching, Germany
M. Rahm
Affiliation:
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Gothenburg, Sweden
T. Fülöp
Affiliation:
Department of Physics, Chalmers University of Technology, SE-41296 Göteborg, Sweden
*
†Email address for correspondence: [email protected]
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Abstract

Accurate modelling of the interaction between fast electrons and partially ionized atoms is important for evaluating tokamak disruption mitigation schemes based on material injection. This requires accounting for the effect of screening of the impurity nuclei by the cloud of bound electrons. In this paper, we generalize the Fokker–Planck operator in a fully ionized plasma by accounting for the effect of screening. We detail the derivation of this generalized operator, and calculate the effective ion length scales, needed in the components of the collision operator, for a number of ion species commonly appearing in fusion experiments. We show that for high electric fields, the secondary runaway growth rate can be substantially larger than in a fully ionized plasma with the same effective charge, although the growth rate is significantly reduced at near-critical electric fields. Furthermore, by comparison with the Boltzmann collision operator, we show that the Fokker–Planck formalism is accurate even for large impurity content.

Keywords

fusion plasmarunaway electrons
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Plasma Physics , Volume 84 , Issue 6 , December 2018 , 905840605
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2018 

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