Suppression of first-wall interaction in negative triangularity plasmas on TCV

Abstract Magnetically confined fusion plasmas with negative triangularity ( δ ) exhibit greater L-mode confinement than with positive δ . Recent experiments in the TCV and DIII-D tokamaks have correlated the confinement improvement to a reduction of fluctuations within the plasma core. We report on fluctuation measurements in the scrape-off layer (SOL) for −0.61 < δ < +0.64 in limited and diverted ohmic L-mode plasmas; these reveal a strong reduction in SOL fluctuation amplitudes at δ ≲ −0.25, and, surprisingly, an almost full suppression of plasma interaction with the main-chamber first-wall, which could have important implications for the prospects of using negative δ plasmas as a reactor solution. An exploration of several physical mechanisms suggests that a reduced connection length—intrinsic to negative δ plasmas—plays a critical role in the origin of this phenomenon.