Abstract
Due to their intrinsic vertical polarization induced by magnetic drifts, outward propagating plasma blobs (filaments), which arise at the nonlinear stage of the pedestal collapse, can serve as natural gaps for cyclotron acceleration of the fast ions having gyro-radius larger than the blob size transverse to magnetic field. Acceleration time is determined by the drift motion of the fast ion guiding center. For the electron temperature at the separatrix Tes ∼ 100 eV, even one blob encountered by the fast ion in the scrape-off layer can increase its energy by 50–60 keV above the injection energy. The possible relation of this result with observations in the ASDEX Upgrade tokamak is discussed.
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