Fakultät für Physik - Digitale Hochschulschriften der LMU - Teil 04/05

Cirrus cloud genesis is a multiscale problem. This makes the parameterization in numerical weather prediction models a challenging task. In order to improve the prediction of cirrus clouds and ice supersaturation formation in the German Weather Service (DWD) model chain, the controlling physical processes are investigated and parameterised in a new cloud ice microphysics scheme. Scale dependencies of the ice microphysical scheme were assessed by conducting simulations with an idealised and realistic regional Consortium for Small-Scale Modeling (COSMO) model setup and a global model (GME). The developed two-moment two-mode cloud ice scheme includes state-of-the-art parameterisations for the two main ice creating processes, homogeneous and heterogeneous nucleation. Homogeneous freezing of supercooled liquid aerosols is triggered in regions with high atmospheric ice supersaturations (145-160 %) and high cooling rates. Heterogeneous nucleation depends mostly on the existence of sufficient ice nuclei in the atmosphere and occurs at lower ice supersaturations. The larger heterogeneously nucleated ice crystals can deplete ice supersaturation and inhibit subsequent homogenenous freezing. In order to avoid an overestimation of heterogeneous nucleation, cloud ice sedimentation and a prognostic budget variable for activated ice nuclei are introduced. A consistent treatment of the depositional growth of the two ice particle modes and the larger snowflakes using a relaxation timescale method was applied which ensures a physical representation for depleting ice supersaturation.

Comparisons between the operational and the new cloud ice microphysics scheme in the GME revealed that the location of cirrus clouds is dominated by the model dynamics whereas the cirrus cloud structures strongly differed for the different schemes. Especially a reduction in the ice water content between 9 and 11 km was observed when using the new cloud ice scheme. This change is an improvement as demonstrated by a comparison with the Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observations (CALIPSO) ice water content product. Further comparisons of the GME with the Integrated Forecast System (IFS) model of the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) show a clear improvement of the ice supersaturation distribution with the new two-moment cloud ice scheme. In-cloud ice supersaturation is correctly captured, which is compliant with in-situ measurements. This is a more physical description then in the IFS model, where in-cloud ice saturation is assumed.

Concentrating solar technologies compete with other rapidly developing renewable energy sources. To succeed it is vital to lower the levelized cost of energy. There are several parameters that can be optimized to reach this goal, but a key component is the improvement of the resource assessment. A better prediction of the solar resource for new facilities brings down financing costs as financial risks are reduced. Moreover, improved solar resource assessment allows to optimize new facilities in regard to the local insolation conditions. This increases energy and cost efficiency. One parameter that is becoming more and more important for the resource assessment is the circumsolar radiation. It is caused by forward scattering of sun light by cloud or aerosol particles. However, measuring circumsolar radiation is demanding and only very limited data sets are available. As a step to bridge this gap, a method was developed in this study to determine circumsolar radiation from readily available data on clouds and aerosol. Specifically, the effective radius and optical thickness of cirrus clouds were used, as well as area mass loadings of several aerosol components. The core of the method to determine the circumsolar radiation is a fast yet precise parameterization. It allows to compute the circumsolar radiation by simple analytical expressions from previously tabulated coefficients, instead of solving the radiative transfer by time-consuming numerical simulations. The lookup tables were generated by extensive calculations using a specifically adjusted version of the Monte Carlo radiative transfer model MYSTIC. To this end, MYSTIC was enhanced with a realistic radiation source: The point source used so far was replaced by a extended sun disk which features a wavelength dependent brightness distribution.

The evaluated aerosol area mass loadings were obtained from the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as model output of the Integrated Forecast System (IFS). To derive the cirrus cloud properties the APICS retrieval framework was applied to Meteosat Second Generation (MSG) measurements. During the course of this study APICS was optimized regarding the retrieval of optically thin cirrus clouds. To this end, a new ground albedo data set was generated on the basis of MSG measurements which serves as a priori assumption in the retrieval. This new data set is, in contrast the so far used one, consistent to the other assumptions made within the retrieval. This is an important pre-requisite for the successful retrieval of optically thin cirrus clouds. Furthermore, APICS was operated with a new cloud mask based on output of the COCS cirrus cloud property retrieval algorithm. It replaces the formerly used cloud mask from the MeCiDa cirrus detection algorithm. Thereby in the order of 70 to 80 percent more optically thin cirrus clouds can be considered, which allow enough light to pass for operation of a typical solar thermal utility.

Considering cirrus clouds the prevailing ice particle shape is an uncertainty factor in the cloud property retrieval as well as in the computation of circumsolar radiation. So far it cannot be determined from MSG but must be assumed a priori. To allow for an uncertainty analysis concerning this parameter APICS was extended to consider several new ice particle shapes in the

retrieval process. It was found, the nescience of the ice particle shape leads to an uncertainty

of up to 50% in the mean circumsolar irradiance.

The newly developed method for the retrieval of circumsolar radiation was validated with ground measurements of the circumsolar ratio (CSR) performed at the Plataforma Solar de Almería (PSA).

This showed that the statistical distribution of the circumsolar radiation can be well characterized with both of the two employed ``Baum'' ice particle shape parameterizations. When comparing instantaneous values timing and amplitude errors become evident, tough. For the circ

DNA wird seit einigen Jahren zur Herstellung von Strukturen mit Nanometer Präzision genutzt. Mittels der am häufigsten verwendeten Techniken, “Tile” und “ DNA Origami”, wurden verschiedenste DNA Objekte wie unter anderem DNA Kristalle, DNA Nanotubes, gebogene und verdrehte Zylinder und selbst komplexe 3D Strukturen hergestellt. Aufgrund der einzigartigen Kontrolle über die räumliche Anordnung von DNA Molekülen wird DNA Nanotechnologie heute in verschiedensten Forschungsgebieten wie struktureller Biologie, Nanomedizin, Einzel-Molekül Detektion oder Plasmon-Forschung verwendet.

In dieser Arbeit wird systematisch die Biege-Steifigkeit (Persistenz Länge) von DNA Nanotubes (HX-Tubes) als Funktion des Umfangs untersucht. Dazu wurden mikrometer- weite thermische Nanotube Fluktuationen mittels Fluoreszenz Mikroskopie analysiert (A,B). Zusätzlich wurden intrinsische und thermische Nanotube Verdrehungen durch Anbindung von Gold-Nanopartikeln (AuNP) und Transmissions Elektronen Mikroskopie (TEM) sicht- bar gemacht (C). Aus diesen Messungen ergibt sich, dass die Peristenz Länge sich pro- portional zum Flächenträgheitsmoment des Nanotube Querschnitts verhält, intrinsische Verdrehungen nur auftreten, wenn sie durch die DNA Sequenzen vorgegeben sind und dass thermische Verdrehungen u ̈ber sehr viel kürzere Distanzen als die Persistenz Länge auftreten. Des weiteren wurde ein DNA Nanotube Elastizitäts-Modell hergeleitet, das Ver- formungen von doppelstängiger DNA sowie von Cross-Overn berücksichtigt und gezeigt, dass alle Messungen in guter Übereinstimmung mit dem Modell sind.

Um ein besseres Verständnis für den Zusammenhang zwischen Persistenz Länge und dem Aufbau von DNA Nanotubes auf der Ebene einzelner DNA Moleküle zu gewinnen wurden die thermischen Verbiegungen von verschiedenen sechs-Helix-Tubes mit unterschiedlichen DNA Architekturen untersucht. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Anordnen von mehreren Cross-Overn innerhalb einer Tube Querschnittsfläche sowie die Verringerung der Dichte von DNA Cross-Overn die Persistenz Länge verringert. Die Ergebnisse werden im Rahmen des zuvor hergeleiteten Elastizitäts Modell diskutiert.

Es wurden verschiedene Strategien zur Herstellung von gebogenen und verdrehten DNA Nanotubes entwickelt. Biegung und Drehung wurden durch gezielte Einfügung oder Auslassung von Basenpaaren, speziell programmierten Faltungswegen, oder spezielle Anordnung von komplementären DNA Sequenzen innerhalb der Nanotubes kontrolliert. Nanotube Konturen wurden mittels TEM, Rasterkraftmikroskopie (AFM), UV-Absorption, sowie stochastischer optischer Rekonstruktionsmikroskopie (STORM) charakterisiert. Die Mes- sungen zeigen, dass gebogene Nanotubes meist geschlossene Ringe bilden und Nanotubes mit Biegung und Drehung helix-förmig sind (D).

Es wird gezeigt, dass Anbindung des organischen Farbstoffs Cy3 an einen oder mehrere

DNA Stränge der HX-Tubes ebenfalls zur Ausbildung von Helix-förmigen Nanotubes führt (E). Ganghöhe und Radius der Nanotubes mit Cy3 Anbindung wurden systematisch in Abhängigkeit der Cy3-Bindungsposition gemessen und das Ergebnis mit einem einfachen Cy3-DNA Bindungsmodell verglichen. Des weiteren wurden die optischen Eigenschaften von Cy3 Moleku ̈len, gebunden an HX-Tubes mittels Fluoreszens-Polaristations-Mikroskopie (FPM) und Fluoreszenslebensdauer Messungen untersucht. Es wurde ein Zusammenhang zwischen Anisotropie (gemessen mittels FPM) und der Orientierung der Cy3 Dipol Achse hergeleitet. Die beobachtete Anisotropie entspricht in diesem Modell einem Winkel von ca. 60° zwischen Cy3-Dipol und DNA Achse.

Es wird gezeigt, dass die Ausbildung von fluoreszenten Silber Clustern, bestehend aus wenigen Atomen (Ag-DNA) innerhalb von einzelsträngigen “DNA hairpins” an der Oberfläche von DNA Nanotubes stattfinden kann (F). DNA Nanotubes mit Ag-DNA Clustern sind fluoreszent und konnten mittels Fluoreszenz Mikroskopie sichtbar gemacht werden. Als Nebenprodukt der Ag-DNA Synthese wurde Aggregation von DNA Nanotubes beobac

Plasmonics with heavily doped semiconductor nanocrystals (NCs) is an emerging field in NC science. However, impurity doping of NCs remains far from trivial and is, as yet, dominated by a low chemical control over the incorporated dopant atoms. An appealing alternative is vacancy doping, where the formation of vacancies in the structure is responsible for an increased carrier density and elegantly circumvents the issues related to impurity doping. Due to high carrier densities of around 10^21cm^(-3) localized surface plasmon resonances (LSPRs) in the near infrared (NIR) are expected, and as such highlighted to close the gap between conventionally doped NCs and noble metal nanoparticles. Copper chalcogenide NCs, namely copper sulfide (Cu2-xS), copper selenide (Cu2-xSe), and copper telluride (Cu2-xTe), are an attractive example of vacancy doped semiconductor NCs, with spectra dominated by intense NIR resonances. Within this study thorough experimental evidence has been given to prove the plasmonic nature of those NIR resonances. By presenting typical plasmonic characteristics, such as refractive index sensitivity of the LSPR, its intrinsic size dependence, plasmon dynamics, or interparticle plasmon coupling, the LSPRs in copper chalcogenide NCs have unambiguously been identified. The chemical nature of vacancy doping turns out to deliver an additional, highly attractive means of control over the LSPR in vacancy doped copper chalcogenide NCs. Through chemical tailoring of the copper vacancy density via controlled oxidation and reduction, as shown in this study, a reversible tuning of the LSPR over a wide range of frequencies in the NIR (1000-2000 nm) becomes feasible. This highlights copper chalcogenide NCs over conventional plasmonic materials. Notably, the complete suppression of the LSPR uncovers the excitonic features present only in the purely semiconducting, un-doped NCs and reveals the unique option to selectively address excitons and highly tunable LSPRs in one material (bandgap Eg~1.2 eV). As such, copper chalcogenide NCs appear to hold as an attractive material system for the investigation of exciton plasmon interactions. Indeed, a quenching of the excitonic transitions in the presence of the developing LSPR is demonstrated within this work, with a full recovery of the initial excitonic properties upon its suppression. A theoretical study on the shape dependent plasmonic properties of Cu2-xTe NCs reveals a deviation from the usual Drude model and suggests that the carriers in vacancy doped copper chalcogenide NCs cannot be treated as fully free. On the other hand, the Lorentz model of localized oscillators appears to account for the weak shape dependence, as observed experimentally, indicating an essential degree of localization of the carriers in vacancy doped copper chalcogenide NCs.

Taken together, this work delivers a huge step toward the complete optical and structural characterization of plasmonic copper chalcogenide NCs. The advantages of semiconductor NC chemistry have been exploited to provide access to novel plasmonic shapes, such as tetrapods that have not been feasible to produce so far. A precise size, shape and phase control presents the basis for this study, and together with a thorough theoretical investigation delivers important aspects to uncover the tunable plasmonic properties of vacancy doped copper chalcogenide NCs.

Halbleiter-Nanokristalle sind eine besondere Materialklasse in den Nanowissenschaften. Sie sind kleinste Halbleiter-Kristalle, die an ihrer Oberfläche mittels organischer Chemie passiviert wurden. Damit können Sie auf völlig neue Arten produziert, prozessiert und zu größeren hybriden Überstrukturen zusammengesetzt werden. In diesen Nanomaterialien treten neue Effekte insbesondere durch die Größeneinschränkung auf. Es stellt sich vielfach die Frage, welche Eigenschaften von den Halbleiter-Materialien übernommen werden und was alleine aufgrund der geometrischen Größenordnung im Nanometerbereich von 1-10 nm zustande kommt.

Diese Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Nachweis von elektronischem Transfer über eine quantenmechanische Tunnelbarriere aus organischen Materialien zwischen dicht gepackten Halbleiternanokristallen. Diese Barriere besteht aus Molekülen der Oberflächenpassivierung und Material für die gewählten Selbstorganisationsmethoden, so dass eine organische Tunnelbarriere von ca. 1 nm zwischen den Nanokristallen der Größe von ca. 3 nm entsteht. Um elektronischen Tunnel-Transfer nachzuweisen, wird erfolgreich der intrinsische Typ-II-Bandversatz der klassischen ausgedehnten CdTe und CdSe-Volumenhalbleitern ausgenutzt, der bedeutet, dass das globale Valenzbandmaximum in CdSe und das Leitungsbandminium in CdTe liegen. Es ist daher Hauptziel der Arbeit, Ladungstrennung in Hybridstrukturen aus dicht gepackten Typ-II-angeordneten CdTe- und CdSe- Halbleiternanokristallen nachzuweisen.

Mittels Photolumineszenzspektroskopie wurde indirekt der Elektronenübergang von CdTe- zu CdSe-Nanokristallen untersucht. Es wurden zwei verschiedene Methoden zur Selbstorganisation überprüft: ungeordnete Cluster aus CdTe- und CdSe-Nanokristallen in wässriger Lösung sowie trockene geschichtete Systeme aus Nanokristall-Monolagen auf Glassubstraten. In beiden Probensystemen deutet eine Photolumineszenzunterdrückung um bis zu 70 % bei den CdTe-Nanokristallen Ladungstrennung durch Elektronenübergang von CdTe- zu CdSe-Nanokristallen an. Eine maximale Transferrate von um 1/100 ps wurde in geschichteten Proben ermittelt. Neben dem Elektronentransfer wurde gezeigt, dass Energietransfer von CdSe- zu CdTe-Nanokristallen stattfindet, der nicht die beobachtete Photolumineszenzunterdrückung erklärt, da er ihr entgegenwirkt. Durch Variation der Nanokristallgrößen konnte eine Korrelation der Photolumineszenzunterdrückung mit dem Versatz der am Elektronentransfer beteiligten Energieniveaus der Nanokristalle aufgedeckt werden. Durch diese indirekten Beweise konnte die Ladungstrennung wie auch der intrinsische Typ-II-Versatz in den Hybridsystemen der verwendeten CdTe- und CdSe-Nanokristallen angezeigt werden.

Oberflächenphotospannungsmessungen bewiesen eindeutig die gerichtete Ladungstrennung in geschichteten Systemen aus CdTe und CdSe Nanokristallen. Die Orientierung der Typ II-Grenzschicht aus CdTe- und CdSe-Nanokristalllagen bestimmte die Richtung der Ladungstrennung, so dass eine umgekehrte Schichtfolge die gemessene Polarität änderte. Der Ladungstransfer wird fast vollständig unterdrückt, wenn die Barrierendicke verdoppelt wird, was für Tunneltransfer erwartet wird. Weiterhin wurden Elektronendiffusion über CdSe-Nanokristallmultischichten und langsamerer Ladungstransfer über CdTe-Nanokristallmultischichten nachgewiesen.

Die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit könnten für Anwendungen zur solaren Energiegewinnung wie Photovoltaik oder photokatalytischer Wasserspaltung relevant sein.

This thesis presents a search for Supersymmetry in events with at least two hadronically decaying tau leptons and missing transverse energy. The ana\-lysis is focused on the electro-weak production of gaugino pairs. Electroweak production processes for SUSY particles are promising candidates for the discovery of Supersymmetry with $R$-parity conservation at hadron-hadron colliders.

For the analysis a sample of proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=\unit[8]{TeV}$ with an integrated luminosity of $\int {\cal L}~\mathrm{dt}= \unit[20.3]{fb^{-1}}$ is used. The collisions have been recorded with the ATLAS detector at the LHC in the year 2012.

In two different selections the Standard Model predictions are compared with the observations. The observation of 6 events in the first selection and 14 in the second does not deviate significantly from the Standard Model with an expectation of 11 events in the first selection and 17 in the second.

These results are interpreted in a phenomenological Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model and in simplified models. For a simplified model with a chargino-neutralino pair production scenario the parameter space for masses of the lightest neutralino up to $\unit[100]{GeV}$ and up to $\unit[350]{GeV}$ for the lightest chargino mass can be excluded.

For a simplified model with chargino pair production processes the parameter space for the lightest neutralino mass up to $30-\unit[50]{GeV}$ in a range for the lightest chargino mass of $170-\unit[330]{GeV}$ can be excluded.

This thesis is focused on the estimation techniques of Standard Model background processes. Different methods for the estimation of the background originating from $Z$-boson and top-quark decays are investigated.

Tropospheric water vapour plays an important role in thermodynamic and radiative processes which have an immediate impact on the weather and climate system.

However, the processes that determine the distribution of water vapour remain poorly understood.

The complexity arises out of a range of source and sink processes from convective clouds on the kilometre scale to cloud systems associated with motions on scales of a thousand or more kilometres, as well as advection of water vapour as a passive tracer outside of clouds.

While large-scale advection of water vapour is well represented in general circulation models, the simulation of small-scale moist processes that are of central importance to the representation of clouds are heavily dependent on parameterisations.

However, observations as well as processes that determine the distribution of the water vapour field are insufficiently explored, leading to constrained parameterisations and therefore contributing significantly to the uncertainty of numerical weather and climate predictions.

Hence, a more accurate description of the inhomogeneous water vapour field based on high-resolution observations is required.

This thesis investigates a comprehensive data set of two-dimensional airborne water vapour observations in the free troposphere collected by a Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) in order to gain a height-resolved statistical characterisation of the inhomogeneous water vapour field.

Structure functions, i.e., statistical moments up to the fifth order of absolute increments over a range of scales, are investigated and power-law behaviour or scale dependence is identified over horizontal distances from about 5~km to 100~km. The slope of the power-law fit, the so-called scaling exponent, is found to take different values, depending on whether or not the observations were taken in an air mass where convective clouds were present. These results are consistent with a non-convective regime that is dominated by large-scale advective processes, leading to monofractal scaling, but strong localised input of small-scale variability by convective circulations leading to intermittent fields.

Further, the observed power-law statistics are used to evaluate the high-resolution numerical weather prediction model COSMO-DE of the German weather service with regard to the small-scale water vapour variability. The results of the scaling exponent analysis of cloud-free and partly cloudy scenes suggest, that the small-scale variance is modeled quite well in comparison with the lidar observations. By using the advantage of the model simulation where data is not limited to a specific flight path, the influence of sampling limitation is estimated and is found to be not significant. Further, the simulation provides humidity data in and beneath clouds which allows for an estimation of the uncertainty of data gaps in the lidar observations due to optically thick clouds. The error is identified to be in a range of only few percents.

This thesis demonstrates that airborne DIAL observations are useful to build up a height-resolved statistical characterisation of tropospheric water vapour variability that allows to distinguish physical mechansims that are responsible for the water vapour distribution, to get new insights into stochastic parameterisations and further to use the structure function method as a suitable reality check of the numerical weather model COSMO-DE.

The ratio of heating power going to electrons and ions will undergo a transition from mixed electron and ion heating as it is in current fusion experiments to dominant electron heating in future experiments and reactors. In order to make valid projections towards future devices the connected changes in plasma response and performance are important to be study and understand: Do electron heated plasmas behave systematically different or is the change of heated species fully compensated by heat exchange from electrons to ions? How does particle transport influence the density profile? Is the energy confinement and the H-mode pedestal reduced with reduced torque input? Does the turbulent transport regime change fundamentally? The unique capabilities of the ECRH system at ASDEX Upgrade enable this change of heated species by replacing NBI with ECRH power and thereby offer the possibility to discuss these and other questions.

For low heating powers corresponding to high collisionalities the transition from mixed electron and ion heating to pure electron heating showed next to no degradation of the global plasma parameters and no change of the edge values of kinetic profiles. The electron density shows an increased central peaking with increased ECRH power. The central electron temperature stays constant while the ion temperature decreases slightly. The toroidal rotation decreases with reduced NBI fraction, but does not influence the profile stability. The power balance analysis shows a large energy transfer from electrons to ions, so that the electron heat flux approaches zero at the edge whereas the ion heat flux is independent of heating mix. The ion heat diffusivity exceeds the electron one.

For high power, low collisionality discharges global plasma parameters show a slight degradation with increasing electron heating. The density profile shows a strong peaking which remains unchanged when modifying the heating mix. The electron temperature profile is unchanged whereas the central ion temperature decreases significantly with increasing ECRH fraction. The relative contribution of the heat exchange is smaller so that the electrons still carry a substantial fraction of heat at the edge. The ion heat flux is still independent of the heating mix and the ion heat diffusivity exceeds the electron one.

The radial electrical field does not show any variation with changing heating mix. The analysis of the whole database of discharges shows a degradation of the ion temperature gradient with increasing Te/Ti and a steepening with increasing gradient of the toroidal rotation. These findings complement previous studies.

The electron density, and the electron and ion temperatures were modelled with a first principle code. The applied sawtooth model could reproduce the experimental observations. The profile shapes, the changing Te/Ti and the peaking of the density and temperature profiles agree very well with the experimental data. Linear gyrokinetic calculations found the ion temperature gradient mode to be the dominant candidate for heat transport. The investigations can explain the observed phenomena in the experiment, like the different degree of increase of ion heat flux or density peaking for various collisionalities.

The results presented in this work show a consistent picture of the observed phenomena and the understanding of the main underlying physics. They allow a correct implementation in the applied computer codes and a reliable prediction of the performance of future fusion devices.

The high confinement mode (H-mode) is the operational scenario foreseen for ITER, DEMO and future fusion power plants. At high densities, which are favourable in order to maximize the fusion power, a back transition from the H-mode to the low confinement mode (L-mode) is observed. This H-mode density limit (HDL) occurs at densities on the order of, but below, the Greenwald density.

In this thesis, the HDL is revisited in the fully tungsten walled ASDEX Upgrade tokamak (AUG). In AUG discharges, four distinct operational phases were identified in the approach towards the HDL.

First, there is a stable H-mode, where the plasma density increases at steady confinement, followed by a degrading H-mode, where the core electron density is fixed and the confinement, expressed as the energy confinement time, reduces. In the third phase, the breakdown of the H-mode and transition to the L-mode, the overall electron density is fixed and the confinement decreases further, leading, finally, to an L-mode, where the density increases again at a steady confinement at typical L-mode values until the disruptive Greenwald limit is reached.

These four phases are reproducible, quasi-stable plasma regimes and provide a framework in which the HDL can be further analysed.

Radiation losses and several other mechanisms, that were proposed as explanations for the HDL, are ruled out for the current set of AUG experiments with tungsten walls.

In addition, a threshold of the radial electric field or of the power flux into the divertor appears to be responsible for the final transition back to L-mode, however, it does not determine the onset of the HDL.

The observation of the four phases is explained by the combination of two mechanisms: a fueling limit due to an outward shift of the ionization profile and an additional energy loss channel, which decreases the confinement.

The latter is most likely created by an increased radial convective transport at the edge of the plasma.

It is shown that the four phases occur due to a coupling of these two mechanisms.

These observations are in line with studies made at AUG with carbon walls, although in those discharges the energy loss was most likely caused by the full detachment of the divertor.

The density of the HDL depends only weakly on the plasma current, unlike the Greenwald limit, and can be increased by high heating power, again unlike the Greenwald limit.

The triangularity of the plasma has no influence on the density of the HDL, though improves the performance of the plasma, since the onset of the degrading H-mode phase occurs at higher densities.

It is explicitly shown that the HDL and also the L-mode density limit are determined by edge parameters.

Using pellet fueling, centrally elevated density profiles above the Greenwald limit can be achieved in stable H-modes at a moderate confinement.

Future tokamaks will have intrinsic density peaking. Consequently, they will most likely operate in H-modes above the Greenwald limit.