Dust in fusion plasmas: theory and modeling

Dust may have a large impact on ITER-scale plasma experiments including both safety and performance issues. However, the physics of dust in fusion plasmas is very complex and multifaceted. Here, we discuss different aspects of dust dynamics including dust-plasma, and dust-surface interactions. We consider the models of dust charging, heating, evaporation/sublimation, dust collision with material walls, etc., which are suitable for the conditions of fusion plasmas. The physical models of all these processes have been incorporated into the DUST Transport (DUSTT) code. Numerical simulations demonstrate that dust particles are very mobile and accelerate to large velocities due to the ion drag force (cruise speed >100 m/s). Deep penetration of dust particles toward the plasma core is predicted. It is shown that DUSTT is capable of reproducing many features of recent dust-related experiments, but much more work is still needed.