Paraxial WKB Method Applied to the Lower Hybrid Wave Propagation

Technical Report · Thu Jul 12 04:00:00 EDT 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1057056· OSTI ID:1057056

Bertelli, N; Poli, E; Harvey, R; Wright, J C; Bonoli, P T; Phillips, C K; Simov, A P; Valeo, E

The paraxial WKB (pWKB) approximation, also called beam tracing method, has been employed in order to study the propagation of lower hybrid (LH) waves in a tokamak plasma. Analogous to the well-know ray tracing method, this approach reduces Maxwell's equations to a set of ordinary differential equations, while, in addition, retains the effects of the finite beam cross-section, and, thus, the effects of diffraction. A new code, LHBEAM (Lower Hybrid BEAM tracing), is presented, which solves the pWKB equations in tokamak geometry for arbitrary launching conditions and for analytic and experimental plasma equilibria. In addition, LHBEAM includes linear electron Landau damping for the evaluation of the absorbed power density and the reconstruction of the wave electric field in both the physical and Fourier space. Illustrative LHBEAM calculations are presented along with a comparison with the ray tracing code GENRAY and the full wave solver TORIC-LH.

• Research Organization: Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC)
• OSTI ID: 1057056
• Report Number(s): PPPL-4780
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
Current Drive
Lower Hybrid Waves
Tokamaks
Wave Propagation