Doppler shifted fast ion Dα light (FIDA) emitted by neutralized energetic ions is imaged in the DIII-D tokamak using a fast framing camera in conjunction with a narrowband interference filter. Both the 2D spatial structure and temporal evolution of the FIDA emission are in agreement with Monte Carlo simulations assuming classical energetic ion slowing down. This technique can be used to obtain 2D energetic ion profile information in fusion plasmas. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Collisional electron drift wave turbulence generates drift wave packet structures with density and vorticity fluctuations in the central plasma pressure gradient region of a linear plasma device. Tracking these packets reveals that they follow an outward directed spiral-shaped trajectory in the (r,θ) plane, are azimuthally stretched, and develop anisotropy as they approach an axisymmetric, radially sheared azimuthal flow located at the plasma boundary. Nonlinear energy transfer measurements and time-delay analysis confirm that structure absorption amplifies the sheared flow. Similar mechanisms likely operate at the edge of confined toroidal plasmas and should lead to the amplification of sheared flows at the boundary of these devices as well.

The DIII-D tokamak is equipped with neutral beam sources that inject in four different directions; in addition, the plasma can be moved up or down to compare off-axis with on-axis injection. Fast-ion data for eight different conditions have been obtained: co/counter, near-tangential/near-perpendicular and on-axis/off-axis. Neutron measurements during short beam pulses assess prompt and delayed losses under low-power conditions. As expected, co-injection has fewer losses than counter, tangential fewer than perpendicular and on-axis fewer than off-axis; the differences are greater at low current than at higher current. The helicity of the magnetic field has a weak effect on the overall confinement. Fast-ion Dα (FIDA) and neutron measurements diagnose the confinement at higher power. The basic trends are the same as in low-power plasmas but, even in plasmas without long wavelength Alfvén modes or other MHD, discrepancies with theory are observed, especially in higher temperature plasmas. At modest temperature, two-dimensional images of the FIDA light are in good agreement with the simulations for both on-axis and off-axis injection. Discrepancies with theory are more pronounced at low fast-ion energy and at high plasma temperature, suggesting that fast-ion transport by microturbulence is responsible for the anomalies. © 2009 IOP Publishing Ltd.

An azimuthally symmetric radially sheared azimuthal flow is driven by a nondiffusive, or residual, turbulent stress localized to a narrow annular region at the boundary of a cylindrical magnetized helicon plasma device. A no-slip condition, imposed by ion-neutral flow damping outside the annular region, combined with a diffusive stress arising from turbulent and collisional viscous damping in the central plasma region, leads to net plasma rotation in the absence of momentum input.

Wide-angle, 2D imaging of Doppler-shifted, Balmer alpha (D α) emission from high energy injected neutrals, charge exchange recombination (CER) emission from neutral beam interaction with thermal ions and fully stripped impurity ions and visible bremsstrahlung (VB) from the core of DIII-D plasmas has been carried out. Narrowband interference filters were used to isolate the specific wavelength ranges of visible radiation for detection by a tangentially viewing, fast-framing camera. Measurements of the Dα emission from fast neutrals injected into the plasma from the low field side reveal the vertical distribution of the beam, its divergence and the variation in its radial penetration with density. Modeling of this emission using both a full Monte Carlo collisional radiative code as well as a simple beam attenuation code coupled to Atomic Data and Analysis Structure emissivity lookup tables yields qualitative agreement, however the absolute magnitudes of the emissivities in the predicted distribution are larger than those measured. Active measurements of carbon CER brightness are in agreement with those made independently along the beam midplane using DIII-D's multichordal, CER spectrometer system, confirming the potential of this technique for obtaining 2D profiles of impurity density. Passive imaging of VB, which can be inverted to obtain local emissivity profiles, is compared with measurements from both a calibrated filter/photomultiplier array and the standard multichordal CER spectrometer system. © 2010 IOP Publishing Ltd.

Visible imaging has been used to provide the 2D spatial structure and temporal evolution of the profile of highenergy neutrals introduced by neutral beam injection, the fast ion profile and a variety of plasma instabilities in DIII-D plasmas; the combination of these techniques form a comprehensive fast ion physics diagnostic suite. The injected neutral profile is imaged in Doppler shifted Dα light induced by collisional excitation. Fast ion profile information was obtained through imaging of Doppler shifted fast ion Dα light (FIDA) emitted by re-neutralized energetic ions. Imaging of FIDA emission during sawtooth events shows a large central depletion following sawtooth crashes-indicative of a broad redistribution of fast ions. Two examples of instability structure measurements are given. Measurements of the detailed 2D poloidal structure of rotating tearing modes were obtained using spectrally filtered fast imaging of broadband visible bremsstrahlung emission, a method which is capable of imaging with high resolution the structure of coherent oscillations in the core of current and next-step fusion plasma experiments and can be applied to virtually any mode with a finite perturbed bremsstrahlung emissivity and frequency in the laboratory frame. Measurements are also presented of the n = 0 energetic particle geodesic acoustic mode which were made by observing fluctuations in active emission. © 2010 IAEA, Vienna Printed in the UK & the USA.

Utilizing an array of new diagnostics and simulation/modelling techniques, recent DIII-D experiments have elucidated a variety of energetic ion transport behaviour in the presence of instabilities ranging from large-scale sawteeth to fine spatial scale microturbulence. Important new insights include sawteeth, such as those of the ITER baseline scenario, causing major redistribution of the energetic ion population; high levels of transport induced by low-amplitude Alfvén eigenmodes can be caused by the integrated effect of a large number of simultaneous modes; and microturbulence can contribute to the removal of alpha ash while having little effect on fusion alphas. This paper provides an overview of recent and upcoming results from the DIII-D Energetic Particles research programme. © 2011 IAEA, Vienna.

Supramolecular nanosubstrate-mediated delivery (SNSMD) leverages the power of molecular self-assembly and a nanostructured substrate platform for the low toxicity, highly efficient co-delivery of biological factors encapsulated in a nanovector. Human fibroblasts are successfully reprogrammed into induced pluripotent stems and transdifferentiated into induced neuronal-like cells.

The absolute rate of nonlinear energy transfer among broadband turbulence, low-frequency zonal flows (ZFs) and geodesic acoustic modes (GAMs) was measured for the first time in fusion-grade plasmas using two independent methods across a range of heating powers. The results show that turbulent kinetic energy from intermediate frequencies (20-80 kHz) was transferred into ZFs and GAMs, as well as into fluctuations at higher frequencies (>80  kHz). As the heating power was increased, the energy transfer from turbulence into GAMs and the GAM amplitudes increased, peaked and then decreased, while the energy transfer into the ZFs and the ZFs themselves increased monotonically with heating power. Thus there exists a competition between ZFs and GAMs for the transfer of turbulent energy, and the transfer into ZFs becomes dominant as the heating power is increased. The poloidal-radial Reynolds stress and the mean radial electric field profiles were also measured at different heating powers and found to be consistent with the energy transfer measurement. The results suggest that ZFs play an important role in the low-to-high (L-H) plasma confinement transition.

Modification of the two existing DIII-D neutral beamlines is planned to allow vertical steering to provide off-axis neutral beam current drive (NBCD) peaked as far off-axis as half the plasma minor radius. New calculations for a downward-steered beam indicate strong current drive with good localization off-axis so long as the toroidal magnetic field, BT, and the plasma current, Ip, point in the same direction. This is due to good alignment of neutral beam injection (NBI) with the local pitch of the magnetic field lines. This model has been tested experimentally on DIII-D by injecting equatorially mounted NBs into reduced size plasmas that are vertically displaced with respect to the vessel midplane. The existence of off-axis NBCD is evident in the changes seen in sawtooth behaviour in the internal inductance. By shifting the plasma upwards or downwards, or by changing the sign of the toroidal field, off-axis NBCD profiles measured with motional Stark effect data and internal loop voltage show a difference in amplitude (40-45%) consistent with differences predicted by the changed NBI alignment with respect to the helicity of the magnetic field lines. The effects of NBI direction relative to field line helicity can be large even in ITER: off-axis NBCD can be increased by more than 30% if the BT direction is reversed. Modification of the DIII-D NB system will strongly support scenario development for ITER and future tokamaks as well as provide flexible scientific tools for understanding transport, energetic particles and heating and current drive. © 2009 IAEA, Vienna.