Invariance of Divertor Retention on External Particle Flow in Detached ASDEX Upgrade Discharges

Abstract
Divertor plasmas with strong external gas puffing in ASDEX Upgrade have shown very efficient impurity retention, increasing with the divertor neutral gas density. The experiments presented here use feedback-controlled gas puffs in discharges with different pumping speed to keep the divertor neutral gas flux density the same. This allows for the first time a decoupling of the divertor neutral gas flux density and the external gas flow. The resulting plasmas are almost identical and show identical impurity retention, clearly demonstrating the importance of the divertor neutral gas density over the externally induced flow.