Fueling of QH-mode plasmas on DIII-D with pellets and gas

The quiescent high confinement mode (QH-mode) discovered on DIII-D [K.H. Burrell et al. Phys. Plasmas 8 (2001) 2153; C.M. Greenfield et al. Phys. Rev. Lett. 86 (2001) 4544] has the promising features of stationary good H-mode plasma confinement with an H-mode edge, but without the periodic edge localized modes (ELMs) common in H-mode that produce a divertor pulsed heat load. Experiments have been carried out with pellet and gas fueling to determine if the QH-mode is robust to theses edge perturbations. Pellets of different sizes were injected from several different locations [L.R. Baylor, T.C. Jernigan et al. J. Nucl. Mater. 290 (2001) 398] and gas puffs were introduced to study core fueling in QH-mode plasmas. The QH-mode is generally a low density operating regime and so there is interest in developing a fueling scheme that can lead to high density to make the QH-mode attractive as a burning plasma scenario. Results indicate that the QH-mode is maintained with small perturbations in density, however large pellet perturbations and gas puffs lead to an almost instantaneous transition to ELMing H-mode.