Radiation driven bifurcations in fusion plasmas

Operation of high performance fusion plasmas relies on self-organised properties to reach appropriate working points that are compatible with both high confinement performance to achieve a burning plasma, and controlled ageing of the confinement device. The latter conditions requires a trade-off between simplicity of the operation point and reaching conditions that can be sustained in steady state. The issue of heat flux control at the plasma edge and onto the plasma facing components is an example of this synergy. We address in this framework the problem of radiative divertor operation. The simplified 1D problem is recast in Hamiltonian formalism, the effective energy being invariant. This property is most efficient to address bifurcations and critical points leading to no-solution regions of the parameter space. Analytical investigation of these solutions indicates that taking into account the radiative front location and constraints on the upstream temperature reduces the operation space. Furthermore, one finds that radiative divertor operation tends to lead to operation at reduced plasma pressure, unless stable conditions and hot upstream plasma temperature can be sustained at vanishing divertor temperature.