Simulating Divertor Detachment of Ohmic Discharges in ASDEX Upgrade Using SOLPS: the Role of Carbon

With divertor detachment being a prerequisite for burning plasma operation in ITER, numerical codes such as SOLPS [1] have been developed for predicting and interpreting the divertor performance at all operational regimes in current tokamaks and ITER. In ITER complete detachment from the outer divertor target is not permitted as this might result in an X-point MARFE, imposing an upper limit for the upstream separatrix density, nesep. Despite the knowledge of the basic mechanisms required for achieving detachment, such as radiative power exhaust, volumetric momentum and charge removal [1], a quantitative evaluation of experimentally observed detached regimes proves to be particularly difficult for several tokamaks. In particular the strong asymmetry of the ion flux density between the inner, Λit, and the outer target Λot with increasing line averaged density, (bar n)e, and in particular ''vanishing'' of the ion flux, defined as full/complete detachment, at the inner target cannot be reproduced. It is unclear how this is related to divertor target plates or other plasma facing components containing carbon. As part of a combined effort at various experimental devices this paper contributes to the validation of the SOLPS code against experimental data from ASDEX Upgrade, AUG, at the onset of divertor detachment. In the framework established under the International Tokamak Physics Activity (ITPA) Divertor and SOL working group a series of ohmic discharges have been performed in AUG, which had as similar as possible plasma parameters as companion discharges undertaken in DIII-D [2]. The effect of activating drift terms, the influence of the chemical sputtering yield at the inner target and in addition to [3] the role of impurity influx from the inner heat shield are analyzed