Long-Pulse Experiments On The Advanced Toroidal Facility

The Advanced Toroidal Facility (ATF) [Fusion Technol. 10, 179 (1986)] is the world’s largest stellarator. It was designed and built to demonstrate high beta, steady-state operation in a toroidal confinement system. During its final operating period ATF achieved pulse lengths of over one hour (4667 s). The objectives of these experiments were (1) investigation of plasma performance at times that are long compared to the plasma/wall equilibrium time; (2) determination of plasma control and wall conditioning techniques; and (3) adaptation of plasma diagnostic and data acquisition systems to long-pulse operation. Other experiments have also extended earlier studies of dimensionless-parameter plasma confinement scaling. By employing two discrete electron cyclotron heating (ECH) frequencies (28 and 35 GHz), and by simultaneously modulating the ECH power, magnetic field, and plasma density, it has been possible to maintain fixed plasma beta and collisionality while modulating the normalized gyroradius.