Fusion-neutron production in the TFTR with deuterium neutral beam injection

Abstract

We report measurements of the fusion reaction rate in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) covering a wide range of plasma conditions and injected neutral beam powers up to 6.3 MW. The fusion-neutron production rate in beam-injected plasmas decreases slightly with increasing plasma density n/sub e/, even though the energy confinement parameter n/sub e/tau/sub E/ generally increases with density. The measurements indicate and Fokker-Planck simulations show that with increasing density the source of fusion neutrons evolves from mainly beam-beam and beam-target reactions at very low n/sub e/ to a combination of beam-target and thermonuclear reactions at high n/sub e/. At a given plasma current, the reduction in neutron source strength at higher n/sub e/ is due to both a decrease in electron temperature and in beam-beam reaction rate. The Fokker-Planck simulations also show that at low n/sub e/, plasma rotation can appreciably reduce the beam-target reaction rate for experiments with co-injection only. The variation of neutron source strength with plasma and beam parameters is as expected for beam-dominated regimes. However, the Fokker-Planck simulations systematically overestimate the measured source strength by a factor of 2 to 3; the source of this discrepancy has not yet been identified.