Pellet charge exchange measurements of confined alphas in deuterium–tritium plasmas (invited) (abstract)

Abstract

Alpha particle confinement is essential to achieving ignition in deuterium–tritium plasmas, and measuring the energy and spatial distributions of fusion alphas is one of the most challenging tasks in plasma diagnostics research. Confined trapped-alpha energy spectra and radial density profiles in the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) have been obtained using the pellet charge exchange (PCX) diagnostic, which measures high energy (Eα=0.5–3.5 MeV), trapped alphas (|v∥/v|=0.048) at a single time slice (Δt∼1 ms) with a spatial resolution of Δr∼5 cm. PCX measures the energy spectrum of energetic helium neutrals resulting from charge exchange interactions of alphas incident on the ablation cloud surrounding small boron and lithium pellets injected radially into TFTR. The success of PCX has led to a number of important results on the behavior of alphas in TFTR. The measured alpha energy spectrum in the plasma core of sawtooth-free discharges is consistent with the alphas being well confined and slowing down classically. Outside the plasma core, the trapped alphas show the effects of stochastic diffusion due to the toroidal magnetic field ripple, with the PCX measured profiles consistent with the functional dependence of the stochastic ripple diffusion on the alpha energy and the q profile. Large sawtooth instabilities result in radial redistribution of the trapped alphas to well outside the q=1 radius and beyond the stochastic ripple loss boundary. Broadening of the radial profiles of trapped alphas is also observed in reversed and reduced shear discharges on TFTR, with potential implications for reactor designs based on optimized shear configurations. Finally, radial redistribution of trapped alpha particles in the presence of core localized Toroidal Alfv́en Eigenmode activity is also observed. Application of PCX measurements to future experiments, including the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor will also be discussed.