Simulation of the conditions of wave excitation for the optimization of the lower hybrid current drive in the Globus-M spherical tokamak

Abstract

At present, the method of current drive by means of lower hybrid waves is not applied to low-aspect-ratio tokamaks, because, in the traditional approach, it would be necessary to use waves with a very high slowing-down factor. However, studies of new transparency regions for waves in a nonuniform magnetized plasma, performed earlier at the Ioffe Physical Technical Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, made it possible to develop an approach in which slow waves are excited in the poloidal (rather than toroidal) direction. In this approach, moderately slowed-down waves first propagate in the poloidal direction, but then turn in the toroidalal direction and get into the dense plasma. In this work, this approach is further developed using numerical methods. In particular, the influence of the density profile in the edge plasma on the efficiency of wave excitation for given antenna parameters is studied in detail.