Perturbative Study of Energetic Particle Redistribution by Alfven Eigenmodes in ITER

Technical Report · Mon Oct 29 04:00:00 EDT 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1056356· OSTI ID:1056356

The modification of particle distributions by magnetohydrodynamic modes is an important topic for magnetically confined plasmas. Low amplitude modes are known to be capable of producing significant modification of injected neutral beam profiles. Flattening of a distribution due to phase mixing in an island or due to portions of phase space becoming stochastic is a process extremely rapid on the time scale of an experiment. In this paper we examine the effect of toroidal Alfven eigenmodes (TAE) and reversed shear Alfven eigenmodes (RSAE) in ITER on alpha particle and injected beam distributions using theoretically predicted mode amplitudes. It is found that for the equilibrium of a hybrid scenario even at ten times the predicted saturation level the modes have negligible effect on these distributions. A strongly reversed shear (or advanced) scenario, having a spectrum of modes that are much more global, is somewhat more susceptible to induced loss due to mode resonance, with alpha particle losses of over one percent with predicted amplitudes and somewhat larger with the assistance of toroidal field ripple. The elevated q profile contributes to stronger TAE (RSAE) drive and more unstable modes. An analysis of the existing mode-particle resonances is carried out to determine which modes are responsible for the profile modification and induced loss. We find that losses are entirely due to resonance with the counter-moving and trapped particle populations, with co-moving passing particles participating in resonances only deep within the plasma and not leading to loss.

• Research Organization: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• OSTI ID: 1056356
• Report Number(s): PPPL-4827
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
MHD Instability
Resonance
Particle Dynamics