Impurity behavior has so far been investigated in steady state hydrogen plasmas in the Large Helical Device, which is a heliotron-type device and excellent for steady state operation. There was always found to be an impurity accumulation window, as observed before (Nakamura et al 2002 Plasma Phys. Control. Fusion44 2121, Nakamura et al 2003 Nucl. Fusion43 219). To clarify the boundary conditions, the dependences of impurity transport on edge plasma parameters are investigated with a database of steady state hydrogen discharges, and the boundary conditions for the impurity accumulation window are discussed. It is found that two different types of impurity screening effects are essential for preventing intrinsic impurities from entering the core plasma. One of them is due to positive radial electric field at the plasma edge on the low collisionality side and the other is impurity retention caused by friction force in the ergodic layer on the high collisionality side. The classification of steady state discharges on n–T space shows that the impurity behavior can be predicted by the impurity shielding criteria based on each empirical scaling.
Core impurity transport in Alcator C-Mod L-, I- and H-mode plasmas