Behavior of helium gas in the LHD vacuum chamber

In general, helium gas does not remain on vacuum chamber walls because of its small activation energy. However, outgassing of helium gas from the walls has been observed in the LHD plasma vacuum chamber with a very long time constant after helium glow discharge cleaning (GDC), and absorption of helium atoms has been observed in plasma discharge experiments using helium gas. The helium partial pressure before the daily experiments was determined only by the gas species of the last GDC. No dependence has been found between the helium partial pressure and the species of the fueling gas of the last plasma experiment fueling gas. Considering that the outgassing rate of the helium gas is almost the same each morning after He GDC, the retention of helium atoms in the wall after the GDC is almost at the same level. The concentration of helium atoms in the wall before the daily experiments is estimated. The outgassing rate after the GDC is 2×10−4 Pa m3/s and the concentration is 4.7×1016 atoms/cm2. These results are of the same order as in another experiments. During helium gas plasma experiments, about a half of the amount of the inlet gas disappears with the missing particles remaining in the wall. The stainless steel wall, which is saturated with He GDC, may still have the capacity to trap high energy helium atoms. However, the energy dependence of trapping helium atoms presently is not clear.