Numerical study on the loss of fast ions produced by minority ion cyclotron resonance heating in EAST

Abstract

The classical prompt loss of fast ions produced by minority ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) is studied by a guiding center orbit following code in the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST). It is found that the loss of fast ions produced by ICRH mainly appears in both ends of the resonance layer, while the loss of fast ions in the middle resonance layer is very small. The dominant fast loss comes from trapped ions, rather than from passing ions. Controlling the location of resonance layer at the plasma core may be more beneficial to the EAST tokamak ICRH. In addition, the loss distribution of fast ions is studied. The results show that the fast ions are mainly lost near the midplane in the poloidal direction, but almost uniformly in the toroidal direction. Moreover, we investigate the dependence of fast ion loss on the ICRH power. The simulation results show that the loss fraction of fast ions in both ends of the resonance region increases with the ion cyclotron range of frequencies (ICRF) power, but barely affects the loss of fast ions in the middle region.