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American Institute of Physics, Physics of Plasmas, 6(13), p. 062503

DOI: 10.1063/1.2206168

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Thermal transport catastrophe and the tokamak edge density limit

Journal article published in 2 by D. A. D’Ippolito, D. A. D. Ippolito, J. R. Myra
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.
This paper was not found in any repository, but could be made available legally by the author.

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Abstract

Experiments on the Alcator C-Mod tokamak [Phys. Plasmas 1, 1511 (1994)] have demonstrated the existence of a density limit that appears to be caused not by radiation but by perpendicular heat convection in the scrape-off layer (SOL). The present paper shows that the collisionality dependence of the blob model provides a plausible explanation for this convective density limit under certain conditions. The thermal equilibrium and stability of the SOL are studied in a two-point (midplane, divertor) model including perpendicular heat convection. A general scaling of the perpendicular heat flux q⊥ with temperature is used to derive conditions for the SOL thermal equilibrium to have two roots and a fold catastrophe associated with root merger. For the particular scaling of q⊥ given by a ``disconnected'' blob model, this equilibrium limit can be interpreted as a SOL density limit associated with X-point cooling in which the blob heat transport plays a role analogous to radiation in other theories.