Modelling of power exhaust in TCV positive and negative triangularity L-mode plasmas

Abstract L-mode negative triangularity (NT) operation is a promising alternative to the positive triangularity (PT) H-mode as a high-confinement edge localised mode-free operational regime. In this work, two TCV Ohmic L-mode core density ramps with opposite triangularity δ ≃ ± 0.3 are investigated using SOLPS-ITER modelling. This numerical study aims to investigate the power exhaust differences between NT and PT focusing, in particular, on the geometrical effect of triangularity. To disentangle the latter from differences related to cross-field transport, anomalous diffusivities for particle ( D n A N ) and energy ( χ e / i A N ) transport are fixed to the same values in PT and NT. The simulation results clearly show dissimilar transport and accumulation of neutral particles in the scrape-off layer for the two configurations. This gives rise to different ionization sources in the edge and divertor regions and produces differences in the poloidal and cross-field fluxes, ultimately leading to different power and particle divertor fluxes in the two configurations. Simulations recover the experimental feature of a hotter and attached outer target ( T e , OSP NT ≳ 5 eV ) in the NT scenario compared to the PT counterpart.