Plasma Response to Supersonic Molecular Beam Injection in J-TEXT

Abstract

Recently, hydrogen fueling experiments with supersonic molecular beam injection (SMBI) system have been performed in the J-TEXT tokamak. To evaluate the effects of the injection amount of SMBI on plasma behaviors, moderate and intensive SMBs have been separately injected and compared with each other in Ohmic discharges. With moderate SMBs, electron density increases about twice as before, the size of magnetic island slightly decreases, and the edge toroidal rotation speed in a counter-current direction, measured by a high resolution spectrometer (Carbon V ion, 227.09 nm, r/a = 0.7–0.8), is accelerated from 8 km/s to 12 km/s. The state of higher electron density with moderate SMBI can be maintained for a long period, which indicates that plasma confinement is improved. However, with intensive SMBs, the accompanied magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) activities are triggered, and the electron density increases moderately. The edge toroidal velocity is decreased, in certain cases even reversed in the co-current direction. The statistical result of experimental data for moderate and intensive SMBs suggests a preferred fueling amount (less than 3.2×1019) to improve the SMBI fueling efficiency in experiments.