Impurity flows and plateau-regime poloidal density variation in a tokamak pedestal

Journal article, 2011

In the pedestal of a tokamak, the sharp radial gradients of density and temperature can give rise to poloidal variation in the density of impurities. At the same time, the flow of the impurity species is modified relative to the conventional neoclassical result. In this paper, these changes to the density and flow of a collisional impurity species are calculated for the case when the main ions are in the plateau regime. In this regime, it is found that the impurity density can be higher at either the inboard or outboard side. This finding differs from earlier results for banana- or Pfirsch-Schlüter-regime main ions, in which case the impurity density is always higher at the inboard side in the absence of rotation. Finally, the modifications to the impurity flow are also given for the other regimes of main-ion collisionality.