Coupled PIC-BCA simulations of the near-surface plasma at the ITER Outer Target*

In this work we present the methodology adopted for modeling the near-surface plasma of ITER’s Outer Target including the sheath/presheath region and the surface gross erosion. The full-orbit Particle-in-Cell hPIC has been adapted to accept inputs from a SOLPS plasma background near the surface. The code resolves the structure of the magnetic presheath / Debye sheath, and produces energy-angle distributions of the ions impacting on the surface which are then passed as an input to the sputtering code Fractal-TRIDYN. Simulations have been run on a region spanning over two meters (poloidally) along the surface of ITER’s Outer Target. We report the calculated energy-angle distributions of the ions at the surface, the expected sputtering yields, and the sputtering fluxes produced in nominal ITER conditions for both helium and DT discharges.