Study of toroidal flow generation by ion cyclotron range of frequency minority heating in the Alcator C-Mod plasma

Abstract

The averaged toroidal flow of energetic minority ions during ICRF (ion cyclotron range of frequencies) heating is investigated in the Alcator C-Mod plasma by applying the GNET code, which can solve the drift kinetic equation with complicated orbits of accelerated energetic particles. It is found that a co-directional toroidal flow of the minority ions is generated in the region outside of the resonance location, and that the toroidal velocity reaches more than 40% of the central ion thermal velocity (Vtor ∼ 300 km/s with PICRF ∼ 2 MW). When we shift the resonance location to the outside of |r/a|∼0.5, the toroidal flow immediately inside of the resonance location is reduced to 0 or changes to the opposite direction, and the toroidal velocity shear is enhanced at r/a ∼ 0.5. A radial diffusion equation for toroidal flow is solved by assuming a torque profile for the minority ion mean flow, and good agreements with experimental radial toroidal flow profiles are obtained. This suggests that the ICRF driven minority ion flow is related to the experimentally observed toroidal rotation during ICRF heating in the Alcator C-Mod plasma.