Paraxial Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin method applied to the lower hybrid wave propagation
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey 08543 (United States)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, EURATOM Association, Boltzmannstr. 2, 85748, Garching (Germany)
- CompX, Del Mar, California 92014 (United States)
- MIT Plasma Science and Fusion Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 (United States)
- Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow (Russian Federation)
The paraxial Wentzel-Kramers-Brillouin (pWKB) approximation, also called beam tracing method, has been employed in order to study the propagation of lower hybrid 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.
- OSTI ID:
- 22086038
- Journal Information:
- Physics of Plasmas, Vol. 19, Issue 8; Other Information: (c) 2012 American Institute of Physics; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1070-664X
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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