Selfconsistent modeling of RF heating of fast particle populations and beams

A model is presented that studies the RF heating of tokamak plasmas in a fully selfconsistent way. It involves the simultaneous description of the temporal evolution of the heated species' velocity distribution function, the electric field responsible for the acceleration of the particles and the modification of background ion and electron temperature profiles resulting from collisional relaxation of the heated particles on the thermalized background. The nonmaxwellian character of the heated species is fully accounted for in the wave equation. As examples RF heating of both very energetic beams and minorities is discussed.