A REVIEW OF RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN ATOMIC PROCESSES FOR DIVERTORS AND EDGE PLASMAS

The most promising concepts for power and particle control in tokamaks and other fusion experiments rely upon atomic processes to transfer the power and momentum from the edge plasma to the plasma facing components. This places new emphasis on atomic processes for low temperature (1-200 eV) and high density (10(20)-10(22) m(-3)) conditions. The most important atomic processes are impurity and hydrogen radiation, ionization, excitation, recombination, charge excange, radiation transport, molecular collisions, and elastic scattering of atoms, molecules and ions. New developments have occurred in each of these areas. The best available data for these processes and an assessment of their role in plasma wall interactions are summarized, and the major areas where improved data are needed are reviewed.