Lower hybrid wavepacket stochasticity revisited

Abstract

Analysis is presented in support of the explanation in Ref. [1] for the observation of relativistic electrons during Lower Hybrid (LH) operation in EC pre-heated plasma at the WEGA stellarator [1,2]. LH power from the WEGA TE11 circular waveguide, 9 cm diameter, un-phased, 2.45 GHz antenna, is radiated into a B≅0.5 T, ̄ne≅5×1017 1/m3 plasma at Te≅10 eV bulk temperature with an EC generated 50 keV component [1]. The fast electrons cycle around flux or drift surfaces with few collisions, sufficient for randomizing phases but insufficient for slowing fast electrons down, and thus repeatedly interact with the rf field close to the antenna mouth, gaining energy in the process. Our antenna calculations reveal a standing electric field pattern at the antenna mouth, with which we formulate the electron dynamics via a relativistic Hamiltonian. A simple approximation of the equations of motion leads to a relativistic generalization of the area-preserving Fermi-Ulam (F-U) map [3], allowing phase-space global stochasticity analysis. At typical WEGA plasma and antenna conditions, the F-U map predicts an LH driven current of about 230 A, at about 225 W of dissipated power, in good agreement with the measurements and analysis reported in [1].