Particle transport in reversed field pinch helium plasmas

Abstract

The isotope effect is known to influence the transport in tokamak machines. In this paper is investigated the isotope effect in the reversed field pinch configuration comparing the particle transport in He and H discharges in the reversed field pinch experiment [G. Rostagni, Fusion Eng. Des. 25, 301 (1995)]. The theory of transport in a stochastic magnetic field predicts a weak isotope effect on the particle transport. The analyses show that the experimental results are in agreement with this theory in the plasma core, where the transport is dominated by the magnetic fluctuations. At the edge, where the transport is due to electrostatic fluctuations, the analyses indicate there may be an isotope mass per charge effect at high density that may disappear when n<6×1019m−3.