High power ICRF heating experiments on the JIPP T-IIU tokamak

Abstract

In the JIPP T-IIU tokamak, a high power ICRF heating experiment has been conducted, up to an extremely high power density (∼2 MW·m−3), with a total RF power of PRF = 2 MW. Great attention has initially been paid to the problem of impurities, and it has been found that (a) the adoption of low Z materials for the limiter, (b) in situ carbon coating (i.e. carbonization) and (c) adequate gas puffing synchronized to the RF pulse are very effective in suppressing radiation loss. With these methods, a remarkable reduction in metal impurities (especially in iron impurity) has been achieved; the total radiation loss has been reduced to less than 30-40% of the input power. In these reduced radiation loss plasmas, the characteristics of ICRF heated plasmas have been studied intensively. With an increase in the ICRF heating power, a deterioration of the energy confinement time has been observed, indicating quantitative agreement with the Kaye-Goldston L-mode scaling. It is shown that the so-called profile consistency, which is the leading feature in neutral beam heated plasmas, also holds in ICRF heated plasma. It has been observed that the electron temperature profile only responds to the safety factor q(a) and does not change when the deposition profile is controlled by tailoring the k1 spectrum.