Spatiotemporal Evolution of Runaway Electron Momentum Distributions in Tokamaks

Paz-Soldan, Carlos; Cooper, Christopher M.; Aleynikov, Pavel; Pace, David C.; Eidietis, Nicholas W.; Brennan, Dylan P.; Granetz, R. S.; Hollmann, Eric M.; Liu, C.; Lvovskiy, Andrey; Moyer, Richard A.; Shiraki, Daisuke

doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.255002

Title: Spatiotemporal Evolution of Runaway Electron Momentum Distributions in Tokamaks

Journal Article · Thu Jun 22 00:00:00 EDT 2017 · Physical Review Letters

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.255002 · OSTI ID:1374548

Paz-Soldan, Carlos ^[1]; Cooper, Christopher M. ^[2]; Aleynikov, Pavel ^[3]; Pace, David C. ^[4]; Eidietis, Nicholas W. ^[4]; Brennan, Dylan P. ^[5]; Granetz, R. S. ^[6]; Hollmann, Eric M. ^[7]; Liu, C. ^[5]; Lvovskiy, Andrey ^[2]; Moyer, Richard A. ^[7]; Shiraki, Daisuke ^[8]

General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States); General Atomics
Oak Ridge Associated Univ., Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
Max-Planck Inst. for Plasma Physics, Greifswald (Germany)
General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
Princeton Univ., NJ (United States)
Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)

Novel spatial, temporal, and energetically resolved measurements of bremsstrahlung hard-x-ray (HXR) emission from runaway electron (RE) populations in tokamaks reveal nonmonotonic RE distribution functions whose properties depend on the interplay of electric field acceleration with collisional and synchrotron damping. Measurements are consistent with theoretical predictions of momentum-space attractors that accumulate runaway electrons. RE distribution functions are measured to shift to a higher energy when the synchrotron force is reduced by decreasing the toroidal magnetic field strength. Increasing the collisional damping by increasing the electron density (at a fixed magnetic and electric field) reduces the energy of the nonmonotonic feature and reduces the HXR growth rate at all energies. Higher-energy HXR growth rates extrapolate to zero at the expected threshold electric field for RE sustainment, while low-energy REs are anomalously lost. The compilation ofHXR emission from different sight lines into the plasma yields energy and pitch-angle-resolved RE distributions and demonstrates increasing pitch-angle and radial gradients with energy.

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Research Organization:: General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States); Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE

Grant/Contract Number:: FC02-04ER54698; FG02-07ER54917; AC05-00OR22725; FC02-99ER54512; SC0016268

OSTI ID:: 1374548

Journal Information:: Physical Review Letters, Journal Name: Physical Review Letters Journal Issue: 25 Vol. 118; ISSN 0031-9007; ISSN PRLTAO

Publisher:: American Physical Society (APS)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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