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Recent efforts have shown that helicon waves (fast waves at > 20ωci) may be an attractive option for driving efficient off-axis current drive during non-inductive tokamak operation for DIII-D, ITER and DEMO. For DIII-D scenarios, the ray tracing code, GENRAY, has been extensively used to study helicon current drive efficiency and location as a function of many plasma parameters. The full wave code, AORSA, which is applicable to arbitrary Larmor radius and can resolve arbitrary ion cyclotron harmonic order, has been recently used to validate the ray tracing technique at these high cyclotron harmonics. If the SOL is ignored, it will be shown that the GENRAY and AORSA calculated current drive profiles are comparable for the envisioned high beta advanced scenarios for DIII-D, where there is high single pass absorption due to electron Landau damping and minimal ion damping. AORSA is also been used to estimate possible SOL effects on helicon current drive coupling and SOL absorption due to collisional and slow wave effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several experiments on different machines and in different fast wave (FW) heating regimes, such as hydrogen minority heating and high harmonic fast waves, have found strong interactions between radio-frequency (RF) waves and the scrape-off layer (SOL) region. This paper examines the propagation and the power loss in the SOL by using the full wave code AORSA, in which the edge plasma beyond the last closed flux surface (LCFS) is included in the solution domain and a collisional damping parameter is used as a proxy to represent the real, and most likely nonlinear, damping processes. 3D AORSA results for the National Spherical Torus eXperiment (NSTX), where a full antenna spectrum is reconstructed, are shown, confirming the same behavior found for a single toroidal mode results in Bertelli et al, Nucl. Fusion, 54 083004, 2014, namely, a strong transition to higher SOL power losses (driven by the RF field) when the FW cut-off is moved away from in front of the antenna by increasing the edge density. Additionally, full wave simulations have been extended to "conventional" tokamaks with higher aspect ratios, such as the DIII-D, Alcator C-Mod, and EAST devices. DIII-D results show similar behavior found in NSTX and NSTX-U, consistent with previous DIII-D experimental observations. In contrast, a different behavior has been found for Alcator C-Mod and EAST, which operate in the minority heating regime unlike NSTX/NSTX-U and DIII-D, which operate in the mid/high harmonic regime. A substantial discussion of some of the main aspects, such as (i) the pitch angle of the magnetic field; (ii) minority heating vs. mid/high harmonic regimes is presented showing the different behavior of the RF field in the SOL region for NSTX-U scenarios with different plasma current. Finally, the preliminary results of the impact of the SOL region on the evaluation of the helicon current drive efficiency in DIII-D is presented for the first time and briefly compared with the different regimes mentioned above. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As follow-up of the benchmark activity of ICRF full-wave codes within the EUROfusion Code Development for Integrated Modelling project (WPCD), a simple-to-complex approach has been devised for verification of the European ICRF codes, imported in the European-Integrated Modelling infrastructure, which represents a unique environment for input-data sharing and result analysis. This benchmark activity has been recently extended to non-European codes, in particular the ICRF full-wave AORSA code. Here we discussed the results of this benchmark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A time-dependent simulation ofC-Mod pulsed ICRF power is made obtaining minority hydrogen ion distributions with the CQL3D-Hybrid-FOW finite-orbit-width Fokker-Planck code. Cyclotron-resonant ICRF fields are calculated with the AORSA full wave code. The RF diffusion coefficients used in CQL3D are obtained with the DC Lorentz gyro-orbit code for perturbed particle trajectories in the combined equilibrium and ICRF electromagnetic fields. Prior results with a zero-bananawidth simulation using the CQL3D/AORSA/DC time-cycles showed a pronounced enhancement of the H distribution in the perpendicular velocity direction compared to results obtained from Stix's quasilinear theory, and this substantially increased the rampup rate of the observed vertically-viewed neutral particle analyzer (NPA) flux, in general agreement with experiment. However, ramp down of the NPA flux after the pulse, remained long compared to the experiment. The present study compares the new FOW results, including relevant gyro-radius effects, to determine the importance of these new effects on the the NPA time-dependence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Waves in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) are one of the major tools to heat fusion plasmas. Full-wave simulations are essential to predict the wave propagation and absorption quantitatively, and it is important that these codes be validated against actual experimental measurements. In this work, the absolute intensity of the ICRF waves previously measured with a phase contrast imaging diagnostic was recalibrated and compared once more with full-wave predictions. In the earlier work, significant discrepancies were found between the measured and the simulated mode converted wave intensity [N. Tsujii et al., Phys. Plasmas 19, 082508]. With the new calibration of the detector array, the measured mode converted wave intensity is now in much better agreement with the full-wave predictions. The agreement is especially good for comparisons performed close to the antenna. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]