posted on 2018-01-09, 15:33authored bySimon Paul Preval, Nigel R. Badnell, Martin O'Mullane
Tungsten is an important element for magnetically confined fusion plasmas but has the potential to cool, or even quench the plasma due to it being an efficient radiator. Total and level-resolved dielectronic recombination (DR) rate coefficients, for all ionization stages, are essential to model tungsten. We describe a set calculations performed using the distorted wave code {\sc autostructure} for the tungsten ions W$^{37+}$ to W$^{28+}$. We demonstrate the importance of relativistic configuration mixing in such calculations. In particular, we show that the partial DR rate coefficients calculated in level and configuration resolution can differ by as little as 5\%, and up to as much as 75\%. Using the new data, we calculate a revised steady-state ionization fraction for tungsten. We find that, relative to the ionization fraction calculated using the recombination rate coefficients of Putterich~\etal (Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion, 50, 085016), the peak temperatures of W$^{37+}$ to W$^{28+}$ ionization states are shifted to lower temperatures spanning 0.9-1.6keV. This temperature range is important for understanding the performance of large tokamaks, such as ITER, because the temperatures in the pedestal, edge, scrape-off-layer and divertor region fall in this range.
Funding
SPP, NRB, and MGOM acknowledge the support
of EPSRC grant EP/1021803 to the University of
Strathclyde. All data calculated as part of this work
are publicly available on the OPEN-ADAS website
https://open.adas.ac.uk.
History
Citation
Journal of Physics B: Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics, 2017
Author affiliation
/Organisation/COLLEGE OF SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING/Department of Physics and Astronomy
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