Inelastic collisions facilitating runaway electron generation in weakly-ionized plasmas

TL;DR

This paper reveals that inelastic collisions in weakly-ionized plasmas significantly enhance runaway electron generation during tokamak startup, challenging previous models that underestimated this effect by neglecting non-differential collision impacts.

Contribution

It demonstrates the critical role of non-differential inelastic collisions in runaway electron generation, showing that traditional Fokker-Planck models underestimate the rate.

Findings

Inelastic collisions enable some electrons to accelerate without collisions.

Fokker-Planck operator underestimates Dreicer generation rate.

Runaway electron generation can be several orders higher than predicted.

Abstract

Dreicer generation is one of the main mechanisms of runaway electrons generation, in particular during tokamak startup. In fully ionized plasma it is described as a diffusive flow from the Maxwellian core into high energies under the effect of the electric field. In this work we demonstrate a critical role of the non-differential nature of inelastic collisions in weakly ionized plasma during tokamak startup, where some electrons experience virtually no collisions during acceleration to the critical energy. We show that using the Fokker-Planck collisional operator can underestimate the Dreicer generation rate by several orders of magnitude.