Achievements of actively controlled divertor detachment compatible with sustained high confinement core in DIII-D and EAST

The compatibility of efficient divertor detachment with high-performance core plasma is vital to the development of magnetically controlled fusion energy. The joint research on the EAST and DIII-D tokamaks demonstrates successful integration of divertor detachment with excellent core plasma confinement quality, a milestone towards solving the critical plasma–wall-interaction (PWI) issue and core-edge integration for ITER and future reactors. In EAST, actively controlled partial detachment with Tet,div ∼ 5 eV around the strike point and H98 > 1 in different H-mode scenarios including the high βP H-mode scenario have been achieved with ITER-like tungsten divertor, by optimizing the detachment access condition and performing detailed experiments for core-edge integration. For active long-pulse detachment feedback control, a 30 s H-mode operation with detachment-control duration being 25 s has been successfully achieved in EAST. DIII-D has achieved actively controlled fully detached divertor with low plasma electron temperature (Tet,div ⩽ 5 eV across the entire divertor target) and low particle flux (degree of detachment, DoD > 3), simultaneously with very high core performance (βN ∼3, βP > 2 and H98 ∼ 1.5) in the high βP scenario being developed for ITER and future reactors. The high-βP high confinement scenario is characterized by an internal transport barrier (ITB) at large radius and a weak edge transport barrier (ETB, or pedestal), which are synergistically self-organized. Both the high-βP scenario and impurity seeding facilitate divertor detachment. The detachment access leads to the reduction of ETB, which facilitates the development of an even stronger ITB at large radius in the high βP scenario. Thus, this strong large radius ITB enables the core confinement improvement during detachment. These significant joint DIII-D and EAST advances on the compatibility of high confinement core and detached divertor show a great potential for achieving a high-performance core plasma suitable for long-pulse operation of fusion reactors with controllable steady-state PWIs.