Effects of Collisionality on the Nonlinear Characteristics of Boundary Turbulence and Blob/hole Transport in Tokamak Plasmas

Full text: Blob/hole dynamics near tokamak separatrix is of striking importance in determining the boundary transport. Based on simulations using an extended 2-region (edge/SOL) fluid model, we found that blob/hole dynamics are sensitively influenced by the plasma collisionality, i.e., ion-electron and ion-neutral collisions. Namely, the holes are enhanced in highly collisional edge whereas the blobs are weakened at the SOL, causing larger particle convection. These blob/hole dynamics are closely correlated with potential dipoles. The trends are experimentally evidenced on the HL-2A tokamak. Moreover, as the neutral-ion collision increases, the blobs at the SOL tend to develop into streamers propagating outwards with reduced amplitude while the holes inwards are suppressed, showing a key role in nonlinear structure regulation and resultant transport suppression. Results suggest that adjusting the plasma collisionality by fueling, e.g., gas puffing, could serve as a method to nonlinearly select turbulent structures, i.e., blobs, holes or streamers, to access the control of boundary transport. (author)