Search

Launching electromagnetic waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) is an efficient method of plasma heating, actively employed in most of fusion machines. ICRF has a number of important supplementary applications, including the generation of high-energy ions. In this paper, we discuss a new set of three-ion ICRF scenarios and the prospect of their use as a dedicated tool for fast ion generation in tokamaks and stellarators. A distinct feature of these scenarios is a strong absorption efficiency possible at very low concentrations of resonant minority ions (∼ 1% or even below). Such concentration levels are typical for impurities contaminating fusion plasmas. An alternative ICRF scenario for maximizing the efficiency of bulk D-T ion heating is suggested for JET and ITER tokamaks, which is based on three-ion ICRF heating of intrinsic Beryllium impurities.

In the present paper, the perturbation of the launched power spectrum of the Lower Hybrid wave at the separatrix by electron density fluctuations in the scrape-off layer is investigated. Considering a slab geometry with magnetic field lines parallel to the toroidal direction, the full wave equation is solved using Comsol Multiphysics r for a fully active multi-junction like LH antenna made of two modules. When electron density fluctuations are incorporated in the dielectric tensor over a thin perturbed layer in front of the grill, it is shown that the power spectrum may be strongly modified from the antenna mouth to the plasma separatrix as the wave propagates. The diffraction effect leads to the appearance of multiple satellite lobes with randomly varying positions, a feature consistent with the recently developed model that has been applied successfully to high density discharges on the Tokamak Tore Supra corresponding to the large spectral gap regime [Decker J. et al. Phys. Plasma 21 (2014) 092504]. The perturbation is found to be maximum for the Fourier components of the fluctuating spectrum in the vicinity of the launched LH wavelength.

In tokamak fusion plasmas, coherent fluctuations in the form of blobs or filaments are routinely observed in the scrape-off layer. In this paper we develop an analytical formalism for the scattering of radio frequency waves by filaments which are cylindrical with their major axis aligned along the toroidal magnetic field lines. Since the magnitude of the ratio of the density inside the filaments to the background density is generally of order 1, the geometric optics approximation cannot be used to describe the scattering. A full-wave model is formulated which assumes that the plasma is cold and that the plasma in the cylindrical filament has uniform density. The background plasma, in which the filament is present, is also assumed to be cold and uniform. The theoretical framework applies to the scattering of any plasma wave.