Temperature and impurity transport studies of heated tokamak plasmas by means of a collisional-radiative model of x-ray emission from ${\mathrm{Mo}}^{30+}$ to ${\mathrm{Mo}}^{39+}$

This work presents and interprets, by means of detailed atomic calculations, observations of L-shell $(n=\overrightarrow{3}n=2)$ transitions in highly ionized molybdenum, the main intrinsic heavy impurity in the Frascati tokamak upgrade plasmas. These hot plasmas were obtained by additional electron cyclotron resonance heating (ECRH), at the frequency of 140 Ghz, during the current ramp-up phase of the discharge. Injecting 400 kW on axis and 800 kW slightly off axis, the peak central electron temperature reached 8.0 and 7.0 keV, respectively, for a time much longer than the ionization equilibrium time of the molybdenum ions. X-ray emissions from rarely observed high charge states, ${\mathrm{Mo}}^{30+}$ to ${\mathrm{Mo}}^{39+},$ have been studied with moderate spectral resolution $(\lambda /\Delta \lambda \sim 150)$ and a time resolution of 5 ms. A sophisticated collisional-radiative model for the study of molybdenum ions in plasmas with electron temperature in the range 4–20 keV is presented. The sensitivity of the x-ray emission to the temperature and to impurity transport processes is discussed. This model has been then used to investigate two different plasma scenarios. In the first regime the ECRH heating occurs on axis during the current ramp up phase, when the magnetic shear is evolving from negative to zero up to the half radius. The spectrum is well reproduced with the molybdenum ions in coronal equilibrium and with a central impurity peaking. In the second regime, at the beginning of the current flat top when magnetic shear is monotonic and sawtoothing activity is appearing, the lowest charge states $({\mathrm{Mo}}^{33+}$ to ${\mathrm{Mo}}^{30+}),$ populated off axis, are affected by anomalous transport and the total molybdenum profile is found to be flat up to the half radius. We conclude with the presentation of “synthetic spectra” computed for even higher temperature plasmas that are expected in future experiments with higher ECRH power input.