Progress in anomalous transport research in toroidal magnetic confinement devices

摘要

Transport is the outstanding physics issue in the quest for fusion by magnetic confinement. In spite of the intrinsic difficulty, a great deal of progress has been made in the past 25 years. Experiments have gone from being dominated by high anomalous losses, of the order of Bohm diffusion losses, to operation with no anomalous transport. This success is due to a combination of improved experimental infrastructure and the high degree of knowledge on how to control plasma discharges, Both have made it possible to access enhanced confinement regimes and to unravel new effects in confinement physics. Although there is not yet a complete understanding of the dynamical mechanisms underlying the anomalous transport process, there is some understanding of important components such as the ion transport loss mechanism at the plasma core and of the main mechanism for turbulence suppression in the enhanced confinement regimes.