Wave dissipation by electron Landau damping in low aspect ratio tokamaks with elliptic magnetic surfaces

Abstract

Longitudinal dielectric permittivity elements are derived for radio-frequency waves in an axisymmetric tokamak with elliptic magnetic surfaces, for arbitrary elongation and inverse aspect ratio. A collisionless plasma model is considered. Drift-kinetic equation is solved separately for untrapped (passing or circulating) and three groups of the trapped particles as a boundary-value problem. Bounce resonances are taken into account. A coordinate system with the “straight” magnetic field lines is used. Permittivity elements, evaluated in the paper, are suitable to estimate the wave dissipation by electron Landau damping (e.g., during the plasma heating and current drive generation) in the frequency range of Alfvén, fast magnetosonic, and lower hybrid waves, for both the large and low aspect ratio tokamaks. The dissipated wave power is expressed by the summation of terms including the imaginary parts of both the diagonal and nondiagonal elements of the longitudinal permittivity.