ICRF heating and current drive experiments on TFTR

1996 
Recent experiments in the Ion Cyclotron Range of Frequencies (ICRF) at TFTR have focused on the RF physics relevant to advanced tokamak D-T reactors. Experiments performed either tested confinement in reactor relevant plasmas or tested specific ICRF heating scenarios under consideration for reactors. H-minority heating was used to supply identical heating sources for matched D-T and D only L-mode plasmas to determine the species scaling for energy confinement. Second harmonic tritium heating was performed with only thermal tritium ions in an L-mode target plasma, verifying a possible start-up scenario for the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER). Direct electron heating in Enhanced Reverse Shear (ERS) plasmas has been found to delay the back transition out of the ERS state. D-T mode conversion of the fast magnetosonic wave to an Ion Berstein Wave (IBW) for off-axis heating and current drive has been successfully demonstrated for the first time. Parasitic Li{sup 7} cyclotron damping limited the fraction of the power going to the electrons to less than 30%. Similar parasitic damping by Be{sup 9} could be problematic in ITER. Doppler shifted fundamental resonance heating of beam ions and alpha particles has also been observed.
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