Impact of ICRF fast-ions on core turbulence and MHD activity in ASDEX upgrade.

Experiments in various tokamaks and their analysis identify the fast ions (FI) generated by NBI and/or ICRF heating as one of the main causes of the observed improvement in core confinement: fast ions can reduce core microturbulence (mainly Ion-Temperature-Gradient (ITG) driven modes) either electrostatically or electromagnetically, or they can resonate with fishbones and high-frequency Alfvén modes, which in turn contribute in stabilizing ITG. In this perspective, we discuss recent experiments done on ASDEX Upgrade (AUG) where ICRF is the main actuator for FI generation for energies above 100 keV. Additionally, ICRF-FIs can substantially impact the MHD activity and its consequent effects on fast ion losses (FILs) and ion-cyclotron emission (ICE). We present dedicated AUG experiments with NBI-D further accelerated by ICRF. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]