Drift and Separation in Collisionality Gradients

Abstract

We identify a single-particle drift resulting from collisional interactions with a background species, in the presence of a collisionality gradient and background net flow. We analyze this drift in different limits, showing how it reduces to the well known impurity pinch for high-Z i impurities. We find that in the low-temperature, singly-ionized limit, the magnitude of the drift becomes mass-dependent and energy-dependent. By solving for the resulting diffusion-advection motion, we propose a mass-separation scheme that takes advantage of this drift, and analyze the separative capability as a function of collisionally dissipated energy.