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Modelling the propagation and dissipation of RF waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies is challenging due to the presence of spatial dispersion. In this work, we are presenting an iterative scheme that includes dispersive effects in all tensor elements in 2D axisymmetry. The proposed method is implemented in the existing full wave solver FEMIC and applied to two fast wave heating scenarios, one with an ITER-like plasma and the other with an AUG-like plasma, in order to evaluate the importance of parallel dispersion in the two different cases. It was found that parallel dispersion is of marginal importance in ITER when using dipole phasing, but has larger impact on the power deposition profiles in AUG, due to up-down asymmetric heating. Furthermore, it is shown that the described iterative method can account for mode conversion to the ion cyclotron wave. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The wave equation for a spatially dispersive inhomogeneous magnetized plasma is given by an integro-differential equation. The effects caused by spatial dispersion in the directions perpendicular and parallel to the magnetic field are quite different. In this study, we show how to solve the wave equation using a newly developed iterative wavelet spectral method for two cases. In the first case, the method is applied to a propagating kinetic Alfvén wave in the perpendicular direction and solved to all orders in FLR. To conserve the kinetic energy flux, first order corrections in equilibrium gradients are used in the dielectric response tensor. In the second case, we verify the method for a fast wave minority heating scenario and study the up- and downshift in the parallel wave number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]