Heating and confinement characteristics of second hearmonic heating in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies on the JT-60 tokamak

Abstract

Results are presented of the second harmonic heating experiments in the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) on JT-60. Heating and confinement characteristics are investigated by using the hydrogen second harmonic (H-majority 2ωcH scheme and the hydrogen minority second harmonic (H-minority 2ωcH scheme (nH/nHe ≈0.1) in two toroidal phasing modes of antenna currents, in phase ((0,0)) and out of phase ((π, 0)), at PIC ≤ 3 MW, ne =(1.3−6.6) × 1019 m−3 and Ip = 1–2.4 MA. Efficient plasma heating has been demonstrated in both heating schemes. Intense non-Maxwellian ion tails are observed at low density. Sawtooth oscillations with an enhanced period in the electron temperature are found over a wide range of electron densities. The incremental energy confinement time, τEinc, for (π, 0) phasing is larger than for (0,0) phasing, irrespective of the heating scheme. In particular, H-minority 2ωcH heating with (π, 0) phasing shows excellent plasma heating with τEinc ≈ 100–120 ms, which is larger than that of neutral beam injection (NBI) heating by a factor of about two. Different dependences of τEinc on Ip are obtained in the two heating schemes. The (0,0) phasing data of τEinc in H-majority 2ωcH heating increase with Ip up to 1.9 MA, while the (π, 0) phasing data in H-minority 2ωcH heating are almost constant with Ip up to 2.4 MA. The global energy confinement shows an L-mode behaviour. The energy confinement time for H-minority 2ωcH heating at high density agrees well with the Shimomura-Odajima scaling.