On RF heating of inhomogeneous collisional plasma under ion-cyclotron resonance conditions

Abstract

During ion-cyclotron resonance (ICR) heating of plasma by the magnetic beach method, as well as in some other versions of ICR heating, it is necessary to excite Alfven oscillations. In this case, it is difficult to avoid the phenomenon of the Alfven resonance, in which Alfven oscillations transform into lower hybrid oscillations. The latter efficiently interact with electrons, due to which most of the deposited RF energy is spent on electron (rather than ion) heating. The Alfven resonance takes place due to plasma inhomogeneity across the external magnetic field. Therefore, it could be expected that variations in the plasma density profile would substantially affect the efficiency of the interaction of RF fields with charged particles. However, the results obtained for different plasma density profiles proved to be nearly the same. In the present work, a plasma is considered the parameters of which correspond to those planned in future ICR plasma heating experiments on the PS-1 facility at the Kurchatov Institute. When analyzing the interaction of RF fields with charged particles, both the collisionless resonance interaction and the interaction caused by Coulomb collisions are taken into account, because, in those experiments, the Coulomb collision frequency will be comparable with the frequency of the heating field. Antennas used for ICR heating excite RF oscillations with a wide spectrum of wavenumbers along the magnetic field. After averaging over the spectrum, the absorbed RF energy calculated with allowance for collisions turns out to be close to that absorbed in collisionless plasma, the energy fraction absorbed by electrons being substantially larger than that absorbed by ions.