Ion heating with high-power perpendicular neutral-beam injection in the Poloidal Divertor Experiment (PDX)

Plasma heating by near-perpendicular injection of up to 7.2 MW of neutral-beam power has been studied in the PDX tokamak. Collisionless plasmas with central ion temperatures up to 6 keV have been obtained. The total plasma energy, which is dominated by contributions from beam and thermal ions, rises linearly with increasing beam power. The ion heating efficiency in PDX is comparable to that measured in PLT with tangential injection.