Investigation of fast ion behavior using orbit following Monte–Carlo code in magnetic perturbed field in KSTAR

Abstract

The fast ion dynamics and the associated heat load on the plasma facing components in the KSTAR tokamak were investigated with the orbit following Monte-Carlo (OFMC) code in several magnetic field configurations and realistic wall geometry. In particular, attention was paid to the effect of resonant magnetic perturbation (RMP) fields. Both the vacuum field approximation as well as the self-consistent field that includes the response of a stationary plasma were considered. In both cases, the magnetic perturbation (MP) is dominated by the toroidal mode number n = 1, but otherwise its structure is strongly affected by the plasma response. The loss of fast ions increased significantly when the MP field was applied. Most loss particles hit the poloidal limiter structure around the outer mid-plane on the low field side, but the distribution of heat loads across the three limiters varied with the form of the MP. Short-timescale loss of supposedly well-confined co-passing fast ions was also observed. These losses started within a few poloidal transits after the fast ion was born deep inside the plasma on the high-field side of the magnetic axis. In the configuration studied, these losses are facilitated by the combination of two factors: (i) the large magnetic drift of fast ions across a wide range of magnetic surfaces due to a low plasma current, and (ii) resonant interactions between the fast ions and magnetic islands that were induced inside the plasma by the external RMP field. These effects are expected to play an important role in present-day tokamaks.