A new quasi-stationary, very high density plasma regime on the W7-AS stellarator

Stellarators have the intrinsic property of steady state operation. However, on present-day stellarators the pulse length is usually not only limited due to technical reasons, but also by physical problems. Lack of density control and a subsequent radiation collapse terminate the discharges quite often at high densities. To improve the control of the plasma-wall interaction, the island divertor concept was developed for optimized stellarators. To test this divertor concept on W7-AS, all limiters were removed and replaced by ten divertor modules. In subsequent divertor experiments a promising new plasma operational regime has been discovered which is termed 'high density H-mode' (HDH-mode). During the transition into that regime a clear reduction of ELM-like events and turbulent fluctuations is observed. The HDH-mode combines good energy confinement with very low impurity confinement resulting in low core radiation, but high edge-localized radiation. Consequently, stationary discharges at densities of typically 2 x 10(20) m(-3) can be performed within the accessible pulse length of about 1 s. At densities above 3 x 10(20 m-3) a controlled transition from attached to partially detached plasmas is observed. The still edge-localized radiation reaches 90% of the heating power so that the power load onto the divertor target plates is further reduced. At a lower toroidal field of 0.9 T average beta-values could be raised from earlier 2% to more than 3% in magnetic field configurations with rather smooth flux surfaces at the plasma boundary. The recently obtained results render excellent prospects for W7-X, the larger superconducting successor experiment of W7-AS.