Dependence of the confinement of fast ions generated by ICRF heating on the field configuration in Heliotron J

Abstract

A formation and confinement experiment for fast ions is performed using the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) minority heating scheme with a proton minority and a deuteron majority in Heliotron J, a low-shear helical-axis heliotron. The effect of the magnetic configuration on the fast-ion confinement is one of the most important issues in helical devices. In this paper, the effect of bumpiness, one of the Fourier components of the field strength, on the trapped fast-ion confinement is clarified by using ICRF minority heating. The role of the bumpiness is a key issue for the design principle of the magnetic field of Heliotron J, where the particle confinement is controlled by the bumpiness. Here, the bumpiness or the bumpy ripple is defined by the Fourier harmonic ratio εb ≡ B04/B00 in (Mizuuchi T et al 2006 Fusion Sci. Technol. 50 352), where B04 is the bumpy component and B00 is the averaged magnetic field strength. The proper bumpiness causes deeply trapped particles to be confined in the small grad-B region. High-energy ions are produced up to 10 keV by injecting an ICRF pulse into an electron cyclotron heating target plasma where ion temperature at the centre Ti(0) = 0.2 keV, electron temperature at the centre Te(0) = 0.8 keV and line-averaged electron density . For the study of the configuration dependence of the fast particle confinement, three configurations are selected; the bumpy ripples are 0.01, 0.06 and 0.15 at the normalized minor radius ρ = 0.67. The measured tail temperatures by using a charge-exchange neutral energy analyser are 1.10 keV, 0.88 keV and 0.50 keV for the ripples of 0.15, 0.06 and 0.01, respectively. The heating efficiency of the bulk ion is also better in the high bumpy case. A Monte-Carlo analysis also indicates good confinement of the high energy ions in the high bumpy case although the difference is not very large compared with the experiment.