Compressional Alfvén and ion–ion hybrid waves in tokamak plasmas with two ion species

Abstract

Compressional Alfvén and ion–ion hybrid waves excited by energetic beam ions are studied in plasmas with two ion species. In our experiment, a hydrogen-deuterium (H-D) plasma is used to produce instabilities similar to those likely to be present in the burning deuterium-tritium plasmas of future tokamaks. Modes are suppressed in the deuterium cyclotron frequency range with increasing hydrogen gas puffing. In plasmas with H/D concentrations of 2.57 or higher, short-lived modes with small and predominantly negative toroidal mode numbers are observed at frequencies ω/ωβD0 ≈ 2.25, where ωβD0 = ωβD(R0) is the on-axis deuterium cyclotron frequency. These are the highest mode frequencies yet detected in the ion cyclotron range in a spherical tokamak. Modeling of the transparency regions and plasma resonances using the cold plasma dispersion relation explains the observed features. Mode conversion at ion–ion hybrid resonances and subsequent kinetic damping is believed to be responsible for mode suppression. The high frequency modes are present due to excitation by wave-particle resonances within the transparency region for high hydrogen concentrations. The absence of other wave-particle resonances explains significant features of our experiment. This technique has possible applications in plasma heating, current drive and real-time diagnosis of relative ion concentration in the plasma core.