Interaction of energetic particles with large and small scale instabilities

Abstract

Beyond a certain heating power, measured and predicted distributions of neutral beam injection (NBI) driven currents deviate from each other even in the absence of MHD instabilities. The most reasonable explanation is a redistribution of fast NBI ions on a time scale smaller than the current redistribution time. The hypothesis of a redistribution of fast ions by background turbulence is discussed. Direct numerical simulation of fast test particles in a given field of electrostatic turbulence indicates that for reasonable parameters fast and thermal particle diffusion can indeed be similar. High quality plasma edge density profiles on ASDEX Upgrade and the recent extension of the reflectometry system allow for a direct comparison of observed TAE eigenfunctions with theoretical ones as obtained with the linear, gyrokinetic, global stability code LIGKA. These comparisons support the hypothesis of TAE-frequency crossing the continuum at the plasma edge in ASDEX Upgrade H-mode discharges. A new fast ion loss detector with 1 MHz time resolution allows frequency and phase resolved correlation between the observed losses and low frequency magnetic perturbations such as TAE modes and rotating magnetic islands. Whereas losses caused by TAE modes are known to be due to resonances in velocity space, by modelling the particle drift orbits we were able to explain losses caused by magnetic islands as due to island formation and stochasticity in the drift orbits.