Experimental Evidence of Molecular Activated Recombination in Detached Recombining Plasmas

Molecular activated recombination (MAR) has been clearly observed for the first time in a divertor plasma simulator. A small amount of hydrogen gas puffing into a helium plasma strongly reduced the ion particle flux along the magnetic field, although the conventional radiative and three-body recombination processes were quenched. Careful comparison of the observed helium Balmer spectra with collisional radiative atomic and molecular data indicates that the population distribution over the atomic levels with relatively low principal quantum numbers can be well explained by taking the MAR effects into account.