Mitigation of peak heat and particle loads on divertor targets remains a critical challenge for steady-state fusion reactors. Unlike conventional advanced divertor concepts that primarily rely on magnetic geometry modification, the radio-frequency (RF)-plugged divertor introduces a controllable field-aligned RF-induced effective potential structure to regulate parallel transport and broaden the scrape-off layer (SOL). In this sense, the RF-plugged divertor can be viewed as a new subclass of advanced divertor concepts in which transport control is achieved through RF-induced effective potential structures rather than magnetic topology changes. In this study, a pseudo-RF potential representing these effects is incorporated into an anisotropic-ion-pressure fluid model to assess the physics of RF plugging and its impact on SOL–divertor transport. Numerical simulations of a one-dimensional magnetic-field-aligned SOL–divertor system show that RF potentials applied on both sides of the divertor region induce localized supersonic transitions and enhance particle confinement between the RF potential locations. The resulting enhancement of radial transport leads to a broadening of the effective SOL width. When the RF potential is comparable to the characteristic SOL plasma temperature, the peak divertor particle load is reduced by approximately a factor of two, while potentials several times larger yield nearly an order-of-magnitude reduction. These findings provide quantitative support for RF-assisted divertor concepts as a potential pathway toward mitigating peak divertor loads and motivate further experimental validation.
Divertor power load studies for attached L-mode single-null plasmas in TCV