SOLPS-ITER simulations of the GyM linear plasma device

In the context of magnetic confinement fusion research, understanding and controlling plasma-material interaction (PMI) is a key point for the realisation of future fusion device, such as ITER. Since the conditions foreseen in ITER have never been obtained before, there is the need to study PMI in ITER-relevant regimes both numerically and experimentally. Linear plasma devices are widely adopted as material-testing facilities, being able to generate ITERrelevant plasmas in a compact and cost-effective fashion. On the numerical aspect, dedicated codes have been developed by the fusion community addressing the modelling of edge plasmas (e.g. SOLPS [1]) and plasma material interaction (e.g. ERO [2]). Edge plasma codes are widely used for the modelling of present-day tokamak devices, but are scarcely applied to linear machines. To bridge this gap, in this contribution, we show the first results concerning the application of the SOLPS-ITER [3] code to the medium-flux linear plasma device GyM[4] (figure 1). As a starting point, simplified argon plasmas were simulated, considering only one charged state (Ar+) and the neutral atom. The atomic nature of the Ar gas offers a simplified picture to apply the code, in absence of the complexity related to molecular species. A detailed sensitivity scan on several code free parameters (such as puffing, pumping efficiency, absorbed power, etc.) is first performed. Simulations results are then compared to experimentally available data, showing a remarkably good quantitative and qualitative agreement between numerical simulations and experimental data Figure 1: Schematic drawing of the linear plasma device GyM.