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Title: Full wave simulations of fast wave efficiency and power losses in the scrape-off layer of tokamak plasmas in mid/high harmonic and minority heating regimes

Journal Article · · Nuclear Fusion
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  1. Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
  2. XCEL Engineering, Inc., Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  3. Oak Ridge National Lab. (ORNL), Oak Ridge, TN (United States)
  4. Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA (United States)
  5. Chinese Academy of Sciences, Hefei (People's Republic of China)
  6. General Atomics, San Diego, CA (United States)
+ Show Author Affiliations

Here, several experiments on different machines and in different fast wave (FW) heating regimes, such as hydrogen minority heating and high harmonic fast waves (HHFW), have found strong interaction between radio-frequency (RF) waves and the scrape-off layer (SOL) region. This paper examines the propagation and the power loss in the SOL by using the full wave code AORSA, in which the edge plasma beyond the last closed flux surface (LCFS) is included in the solution domain and a collisional damping parameter is used as a proxy to represent the real, and most likely nonlinear, damping processes. 2D and 3D AORSA results for the National Spherical Torus eXperiment (NSTX) have shown a strong transition to higher SOL power losses (driven by the RF field) when the FW cut-off is removed from in front of the antenna by increasing the edge density. Here, full wave simulations have been extended for 'conventional' tokamaks with higher aspect ratios, such as the DIII-D, Alcator C-Mod, and EAST devices. DIII-D results in HHFW regime show similar behavior found in NSTX and NSTX-U, consistent with previous DIII-D experimental observations. In contrast, a different behavior has been found for C-Mod and EAST, which operate in the minority heating regime.

Research Organization:
Princeton Plasma Physics Lab. (PPPL), Princeton, NJ (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
AC02-05CH11231; AC02-09CH11466; AC05-00OR22725; FC02-01ER54648
OSTI ID:
1256598
Report Number(s):
PPPL-5095
Journal Information:
Nuclear Fusion, Vol. 56, Issue 1; ISSN 0029-5515
Publisher:
IOP ScienceCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 18 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Cited By (6)

Resonance in fast-wave amplitude in the periphery of cylindrical plasmas and application to edge losses of wave heating power in tokamaks journal July 2016
Effect of wall boundary on the scrape-off layer losses of high harmonic fast wave in NSTX and NSTX-U journal June 2019
Filament-assisted mode conversion in magnetized plasmas journal January 2020
Resolving interactions between ion-cyclotron range of frequencies heating and the scrape-off layer plasma in EAST using divertor probes journal March 2019
Cold plasma finite element wave model for helicon waves journal February 2019
Survey of heating and current drive for K-DEMO journal January 2018

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70 PLASMA PHYSICS AND FUSION TECHNOLOGY
fast wave
heating losses
scrape-off layer
HHFW
ICRH
SOL
power
losses
alcator C-Mod
DIII-D tokamak
NSTX
performance
device