Abstract
In plasmas of relatively lower collisionality, such as scrape-off layer (SOL) of fusion tokamak device, parallel heat conductivity of plasma ion becomes smaller than expected by the classical Spitzer-Harm model due to nonlocal kinetic effect. We have assessed, by simulation, impact and role of such kinetic effect of ion heat conductivity (abbreviated by ion KE in this paper) on DEMO relevant tokamak SOL plasma, supposing Japanese demonstration tokamak reactor concept JA DEMO. A series of test simulation, where the ion KE is modeled by a widely used Free-streaming energy (FSE) limited model, has demonstrated the following significant impact of the ion KE on JA DEMO SOL plasma at the baseline operation scenario: (1) the ion KE decreases the ion parallel heat flux density around X-point and further upstream of low field side (LFS) area along the separatrix, where the parallel collisionality tends to decrease due to combination of higher temperature, lower density (i.e. longer mean free path of ion collisions) and higher temperature gradient (shorter characteristic length). Up to 40-60 % of decrease, compared to the case w/o ion KE, is observed among the tested cases where the ion KE level, specified by parameter αi in the FSE-limited model, is scanned over the possible range 0.2 < αi < 2.0. (2) The ion KE leads to significant increase in the ion temperature Ti (up to 600 % of increase among the tested cases) and significant decrease in the ion density ni (up to -80 % of decrease among the tested cases), widely over SOL upstream. By energy balance analysis, it has been suggested that the ion KE affects the upstream ni and Ti, respectively by power of 0.4 and -0.4 of the flux limiting factor, around the separatrix upstream as far as spatial change in plasma parameters are moderate. The results of this study serve as a fundamental assessment of the ion KE for DEMO relevant SOL plasma, clarifying the need of further sophistication of the modeling toward quantitaive prediction.