The dependence of H-mode energy confinement and transport on collisionality in NSTX

Understanding the dependence of confinement on collisionality in tokamaks is important for the design of next-step devices, which will operate at collisionalities at least one order of magnitude lower than in the present generation. A wide range of collisionality has been obtained in the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) by employing two different wall conditioning techniques, one with boronization and between-shot helium glow discharge conditioning (HeGDC+B), and one using lithium evaporation (Li EVAP). Previous studies of HeGDC+ B plasmas indicated a strong increase of normalized confinement with decreasing collisionality. Discharges with lithium conditioning discussed in the present study generally achieved lower collisionality, extending the accessible range of collisionality by a factor of two. While the confinement dependences on dimensional, engineering variables of the HeGDC+B and Li EVAP datasets differed, collisionality was found to unify the trends, with the lower collisionality lithium conditioned discharges extending the trend of increasing normalized confinement time, B-T tau E, with decreasing collisionality when other dimensionless variables were held as fixed as possible. This increase of confinement with decreasing collisionality was driven by a large reduction in electron transport in the outer region of the plasma. This result is consistent with gyrokinetic calculations that show microtearing and electron temperature gradient (ETG) modes to be more stable for the lower collisionality discharges. Ion transport, near neoclassical at high collisionality, became more anomalous at lower collisionality, possibly due to the growth of hybrid TEM/KBM modes in the outer regions of the plasma.