Investigating the impact of inelastic collisions on electron cooling rates and heat transport during gas-puffed-discharges in LAPD plasmas

The large-area Lanthanum Hexaboride cathode and gas-puff-fueling upgrades, conducted in 2020, have introduced new operational regimes that the Large Plasma Device (LAPD) can access. At high gas-puff-fueling rates, electron heating from the plasma source can become localized to the source region, in contrast with the prefered bulk heating regime of typical operations. We study the impact of electron cooling via inelastic collisions (ionization, excitation, recombination, etc.) with neutral and singly-ionized helium on heat transport and temperature profiles in this source-localized heating regime.