Determination of the parametric region in which runaway electron energy losses are dominated by bremsstrahlung radiation in tokamaks

It has been recently argued that, at sufficiently large parallel electric fields, bremsstrahlung radiation can greatly reduce the maximum energy that runaway electrons can gain in tokamaks [M. Bakhtiari et al., Phys. Plasmas 12, 102503 (2005)]. In this contribution, the work of these authors is extended to show that the region where bremsstrahlung radiation dominate runaway energy losses is however more restricted than reported by them. Expressions will be provided for the limits of this region within the parameter space spanned by the background density and parallel electric field, as a function of the rest of the plasma parameters. It will be shown that the background density has to be above a certain critical value and that the parallel electric field must lie within a range of values, below and above which synchrotron radiation dominate the runaway energy losses. Finally, it will be demonstrated that typical disruption parameters lie within this region and, as a result, bremsstrahlung losses still play an important role in controlling the runaway energy.