Local effects of ECRH on argon transport in L-mode discharges at ASDEX Upgrade

The transport of argon as trace impurity has been investigated in electron cyclotron resonance heated L-mode discharges at ASDEX Upgrade to test recent theories predicting the rise of an outward impurity convection. The profiles of the argon transport coefficients for r/a < 0.65 have been determined by analysing the linear flux-gradient dependence of the total argon ion density evolution after the puff. A new methodology to experimentally obtain the total impurity ion density from the integrated use of two spectroscopic diagnostic and the 1D impurity transport code STRAHL has been developed. Results confirm the enhancement in diffusivity and the rise of the positive convection observed in previous studies, but show for the first time how these effects are strongly localized around the electron cyclotron resonance heating deposition radius. These experimental results are found to be in promising qualitative agreement with a set of quasi-linear gyrokinetic simulations with the code GS2.