Neutral Beam Ion Research Articles

Fast-Particle Diagnostics on LHD

To aid understanding of physics related to fast ions in the Large Helical Device (LHD) with a three-dimensional shape, a comprehensive set of fast-particle diagnostics has been developed. Fast ions (H+) have been created by neutral beam injection and ion cyclotron resonance heating in LHD discharges. Intense fast-ion populations not only heat the bulk plasma but also drive collective instabilities under certain experimental conditions. Fast-ion experiments on LHD have been conducted to investigate neoclassical confinement of fast ions and issues on anomalous transport of fast ions induced by fast-ion-driven instabilities. This paper reviews fast-particle diagnostics that are essential for study of fast-ion physics on LHD.

Numerical Analyses of Energetic Particles in LHD

The confinement of energetic ions generated by neutral beam injection (NBI) and ion cyclotron resonance frequency heating is studied using GNET simulation code, in which the drift kinetic equation is solved in five-dimensional phase-space. The steady-state distributions of the energetic ions are obtained, and characteristics of the energetic-ion distribution depending on the plasma heating method are shown. The magnetic configuration effect on the energetic-ion confinement is also investigated, and it is found that the energetic-ion confinement is improved by a strong inward shift of the magnetic axis position in the major radius direction. The interaction between energetic particles and Alfvén eigenmodes are investigated using the MEGA code and the AE3D code. A reduced version of the MEGA code has been developed to simulate the Alfvén eigenmode (AE) evolution in the Large Helical Device (LHD) plasma with NBI and collisions taken into account. The spatial profile and frequency of the AE modes in the LHD plasma are analyzed with the AE3D code. The evolution of energetic particles and AE mode amplitude and phase are followed in a self-consistent way, while the AE spatial profiles are assumed to be constant. It is demonstrated that the AE bursts can be simulated with the new code.

Operating experiences from existing fusion facilities in view of ITER safety and reliability

The objective of this ongoing activity is to develop a fusion specific component failure database useful to quantify probabilistic safety assessment, support design activity, quantify reliability, availability, maintainability, and inspectability (RAMI) analyses, and support any other uses where field experience can provide feedback to fusion facility design and operation. The data collection began in 1989. At first, it was to “harvest” already-published data from high-technology industries. Later, attention was also directed to collecting and analyzing operating experience data from existing tokamaks and other fusion experiments. Operating experience of European, American and Japanese facilities are being investigated. The main studies performed thus far have been on JET systems (such as Vacuum, Active Gas Handling (AGH), Neutral Beam Injectors, Power Supply and Ion Cyclotron Resonant Heating systems), ASDEX Electron Cyclotron Resonant Heating system, and the Tore Supra cryogenics, superconducting magnet and water cooling system of plasma facing component for Europe; DIII-D, TFTR, Tritium Systems Test Assembly and other facilities for the United States; and the Tritium Processing Laboratory for Japan. Additional systems will be investigated in the future. The paper is dedicated to give an overview on the overall activity, with indication of references, and a global overview on availability of different fusion devices.

Numerical simulation for the accelerator of the KSTAR neutral beam ion source

Recent experiments with a prototype long-pulse, high-current ion source being developed for the neutral beam injection system of the Korea Superconducting Tokamak Advanced Research have shown that the accelerator grid assembly needs a further upgrade to achieve the final goal of 120keV/65A for the deuterium ion beam. The accelerator upgrade concept was determined theoretically by simulations using the IGUN code. The simulation study was focused on finding parameter sets that raise the optimum perveance as large as possible and reduce the beam divergence as low as possible. From the simulation results, it was concluded that it is possible to achieve this goal by sliming the plasma grid (G1), shortening the second gap (G2-G3), and adjusting the G2 voltage ratio.

Drift stabilization of ballooning modes in a high-⟨β⟩ LHD configuration

Ideal MHD yields at best inconclusive predictions about the stability of the LHD heliotron for ⟨β⟩ ⩾ 3%. We investigate the impact of the drift stabilization of ballooning modes for the inward-shifted LHD configuration (vacuum magnetic axis R0 ∼ 3.5 m). The background equilibrium is considered anisotropic in which the neutral beam ions contribute about 1/4 fraction of the total diamagnetic beta, ⟨βdia⟩. A drift corrected ballooning mode equation obtained from the linearized gyrokinetic equation is expanded assuming that the hot particle drifts are much larger than the mode frequency. The fast particle pressure gradients contribute weakly to both the instability drive and the diamagnetic drift stabilization (which is dominated by the thermal ion diamagnetic drifts) for ⟨βdia⟩ ∊ [0, 4.8]%. In the single-fluid limit (diamagnetic drifts ignored), the thermal pressure gradients drive ballooning modes in a broad region encompassing the outer 60–90% of the plasma volume at ⟨βdia⟩ ≈ 4.8%. To stabilize these modes, we find that diamagnetic drift corrections must be invoked (mainly due to the thermal ions). The energetic ion diamagnetic drifts play a role only for low wave number values, kα ⩽ 8. It has been verified that the fast particle drift ordering imposed by the model is amply satisfied for on-axis hot particle to thermal density Nh0/Ni0 ≈ 1% even at high ⟨βdia⟩.

Plasma electron-emitting source in a low-pressure beam-plasma discharge in a stationary plasma thruster

A new type of plasma electron-emitting source capable of increasing the temperature of plasma electrons behind the edge of a stationary plasma thruster (SPT) to 7–15 eV has been developed and investigated experimentally. For the same parameters of the main discharge, the thrust, the thrust efficiency, the mass use factor, and the lifetime of the “SPT anode unit-plasma electron-emitting source” assembly are found to increase substantially as compared to a thruster equipped with a conventional cathode compensator. Simultaneously, the neutral particle pressure required for the existence of self-consistent distributions of the electric field and charged particle density in the drift space of the neutralized ion beam decreases appreciably. It is shown that the volume of the region in which primary slow ions are produced increases with increasing ionization frequency. Three additional channels for discharge control are implemented. The ranges in which the discharge parameters can be controlled are extended.

FAST plasma scenarios and equilibrium configurations

In this paper we present the fusion advanced studies torus (FAST) plasma scenarios and equilibrium configurations, designed to reproduce the ITER ones (with scaled plasma current) and suitable to fulfil plasma conditions for integrated studies of plasma–wall interaction, burning plasma physics, ITER relevant operation problems and steady state scenarios. The attention is focused on FAST flexibility in terms of both performance and physics that can be investigated: operations are foreseen in a wide range of parameters from high performance H-mode (toroidal field, BT, up to 8.5 T; plasma current, IP, up to 8 MA) to advanced tokamak (AT) operation (IP = 3 MA) as well as full non-inductive current scenario (IP = 2 MA). The coupled heating power is provided with 30 MW delivered by an ion cyclotron resonance heating system (30–90 MHz), 6 MW by a lower hybrid system (3.7 or 5 GHz) for the long pulse AT scenario, 4 MW by an electron cyclotron resonant heating system (170 GHz − BT = 6 T) for MHD and localized electron heating control and, eventually, with 10 MW by a negative neutral ion beam (NNBI), which the ports are designed to accommodate. In the reference H-mode scenario FAST preserves (with respect to ITER) fast ion induced as well as turbulence fluctuation spectra, thus addressing the cross-scale couplings issue of micro- to meso-scale physics. The non-inductive scenario at IP = 2 MA is obtained with 60–70% of bootstrap current and the remaining by LHCD. Predictive simulations of the H-mode scenarios have been performed by means of the JETTO code, using a semi-empirical mixed Bohm/gyro-Bohm transport model. Plasma position and shape control studies are also presented for the reference scenario.

Buffer gas cooling of polyatomic ions in rf multi-electrode traps

Cooling all degrees of freedom of a molecule, a cluster, or even a nanoparticle which is suspended in a vacuum, is an experimental challenge. Without suitable schemes, cold or ultracold chemical reactions are not feasible. Methods such as laser based preparation of very slow atoms, decelerating molecules to low velocities with electric fields or freezing molecular ions into Coulomb crystals, are generally not suitable to cool the vibrational or rotational motion of molecules. This contribution describes a new method in which a beam of slow atoms or molecules (H, He, H2, or D2) is used for cooling charged particles confined in a multi-electrode rf trap. For reaching sub-K temperatures, the fast part of a cold effusive beam is removed with a shutter before the slow remaining neutrals interact with the ion cloud. The development of a pulsed cold beam source is discussed as well as suitable methods for determining the ion temperature. A challenging application is to prepare internally cold CH5+ for spectroscopy or chemistry. New experimental results for hydrogen abstraction in collisions with slow H atoms are reported at energies of a few meV. For evaluating these measurements and for predicting effective rate coefficients at lower energies, the kinematic conditions of the slow neutral beam-ion trap arrangement have been analyzed in detail. The potential of cooling ions such as protonated methane or H3+ with slow energy selected H atoms is briefly mentioned. An interesting process is the formation of weakly bound ions such as H4+ or CH6+ via radiative or ternary association. Such ions are ideal candidates for preparing the corresponding collision complexes very close (microeV) to the dissociation continuum using infrared transitions.

Comparison of collective Thomson scattering signals due to fast ions in ITER scenarios with fusion and auxiliary heating

Auxiliary heating such as neutral beam injection (NBI) and ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) will accelerate ions in ITER up to energies in the MeV range, i.e. energies which are also typical for alpha particles. Fast ions of any of these populations will elevate the collective Thomson scattering (CTS) signal for the proposed CTS diagnostic in ITER. It is of interest to determine the contributions of these fast ion populations to the CTS signal for large Doppler shifts of the scattered radiation since conclusions can mostly be drawn for the dominant contributor. In this study, distribution functions of fast ions generated by NBI and ICRH are calculated for a steady-state ITER burning plasma equilibrium with the ASCOT and PION codes, respectively. The parameters for the auxiliary heating systems correspond to the design currently foreseen for ITER. The geometry of the CTS system for ITER is chosen such that near perpendicular and near parallel velocity components are resolved. In the investigated ICRH scenario, waves at 50 MHz resonate with tritium at the second harmonic off-axis on the low field side. Effects of a minority heating scheme with 3He are also considered. CTS scattering functions for fast deuterons, fast tritons, fast 3He and the fusion born alphas are presented, revealing that fusion alphas dominate the measurable signal by an order of magnitude or more in the Doppler shift frequency ranges typical for fast ions. Hence the observable CTS signal can mostly be attributed to the alpha population in these frequency ranges. The exceptions are limited regions in space with some non-negligible signal due to beam ions or fast 3He which give rise to about 30% and 10–20% of the CTS signal, respectively. In turn, the dominance of the alpha contribution implies that the effects of other fast ion contributions will be difficult to observe by CTS.

An analysis of the influence of impurities on fast particle attenuation and on fast ion spectral shape in LHD

Neutral particle fluxes measured by neutral particle analyzers can provide information about the ion temperature as well as the non-Maxwellian anisotropic ion distribution tails from neutral beam injection and ion cyclotron radio frequency heating. In the case of multidirectional diagnostics employing high resolution atomic energy spectrometers, the neutral atomic flux source is not localized in contrast to pellet charge exchange or diagnostic neutral beam methods. The correct interpretation of such measurements from plasma in a complex toroidally asymmetric geometry, like that of LHD, requires careful numerical modeling of the neutral flux formation. Previously a measured neutral flux calculation scheme was developed and was used for the LHD geometry and a suitable analytic expression for ionization cross sections sigma(s)(z)(E,n(e),T(e),Z(eff)) of impurities was formulated by Janev et al. [Nucl. Fusion 29, 2125 (1989)]. In this paper, the attenuation of fast particles by impurities is incorporated into the neutral flux calculation scheme and the influence of impurities on the calculated neutral flux spectra is shown. Finally, the behavior of the calculated and experimental suprathermal particle distributions is compared for pure hydrogen and for argon impurity seeded plasmas.

Commissioning activities and first results from the collective Thomson scattering diagnostic on ASDEX Upgrade (invited)

The collective Thomson scattering (CTS) diagnostic installed on ASDEX Upgrade uses millimeter waves generated by the newly installed 1 MW dual frequency gyrotron as probing radiation at 105 GHz. It measures backscattered radiation with a heterodyne receiver having 50 channels (between 100 and 110 GHz) to resolve the one-dimensional velocity distribution of the confined fast ions. The steerable antennas will allow different scattering geometries to fully explore the anisotropic fast ion distributions at different spatial locations. This paper covers the capabilities and operational limits of the diagnostic. It then describes the commissioning activities carried out to date. These activities include gyrotron studies, transmission line alignment, and beam pattern measurements in the vacuum vessel. Overlap experiments in near perpendicular and near parallel have confirmed the successful alignment of the system. First results in near perpendicular of scattered spectra in a neutral beam injection (NBI) and ion cyclotron resonance heating (ICRH) plasma (minority hydrogen) on ASDEX Upgrade have shown evidence of ICRH heating phase of hydrogen.

2.5-Dimensional numerical simulation of a high-current ion linear induction accelerator

Results are presented from numerical particle simulations of the transport and acceleration of a high-current tubular ion beam through one to five magnetically insulated accelerating gaps. The ion beam is neutralized by an accompanying electron beam. The possibility of transporting a high-current neutralized ion beam through five cusps is demonstrated. It is shown that the quality of the distribution function of a high-current ion beam at the exit from the accelerator can be substantially improved by optimizing the energy of the neutralizing electron beam. It is also shown that, by injecting additional high-current electron beams into the cusps, the accelerated ion beam can be made more monoenergetic and its divergence can be reduced.

MHD induced neutral beam ion loss from NSTX plasmas

Bursts of ∼60 kHz activity on Mirnov coils, identified as energetic particle modes, occur frequently in NSTX plasmas and these are accompanied by bursts of neutral beam ion loss over a range in pitch angles. These losses have been measured with a scintillator type loss probe imaged with a high speed (> 10 000 frames s−1) video camera, giving the evolution of the energy and pitch angle distributions of the lost neutral beam ions over the course of the events. The instability occurs below the TAE frequency in NSTX (∼100 kHz) in high beta plasmas and may also be identified as a beta-induced Alfvén acoustic (BAAE) mode.The data from one burst that causes a 13% reduction in the neutron rate have been studied extensively and have several interesting features. First, the burst begins with the mode having a purely n = 1 character, sweeping downwards in frequency. However, there is no change to the underlying loss signal during this time interval. This indicates there is no phase space transport of fast (80 keV D) ions into the loss cone seen by the probe from the frequency sweeping. As the burst evolves further in time, a concurrent n = 2 mode arises, followed quickly by a concurrent n = 3 mode. During this period when multiple modes are present, loss over a wide range of pitch angles is seen simultaneously, suggesting stochastization of the beam ion phase space. There is no evidence of any sweeping in pitch angle of the loss in either phase of the burst, at least not on the 100 µs time scale.

Electron-impact ionization of SiCl3 using an improved crossed fast-neutral-beam - electron-beam apparatus

The fast-neutral-beam technique is a versatile approach to the determination of absolute cross sections for electron-impact ionization of atoms, stable molecules as well as free radicals and metastable species. A fast neutral beam of the species under study is prepared by charge-transfer neutralization of a mass-selected ion beam and the species are subsequently ionized by an electron beam. Mass- and energy-dispersive selection separates singly from multiply charged ions and parent from fragment ions and allows the determination of partial ionization cross sections. Here we describe some major improvements that were made recently to the fast-beam apparatus that has been used extensively for ionization cross section measurements for the past 15 years in our group. Experiments using well-established ionization cross sections in conjunction with extensive ion trajectory simulations were carried out to test the satisfactory performance of the modified fast-neutral-beam apparatus. We also report absolute partial cross sections for the formation of various singly charged positive ions produced by electron impact on SiCl3 for impact energies from threshold to 200 eV in the modified fast-beam apparatus.

Criticality in the fabrication of ion extraction system for SST-1 neutral beam injector

For the heating of plasma in steady-state superconducting tokamak (SST-1) (Y.C. Saxena, SST-1 Team, Present status of the SST-1 project, Nucl. Fusion 40 (2000) 1069–1082; D. Bora, SST-1 Team, Test results on systems developed for the SST-1 tokamak, Nucl. Fusion 43 (2003) 1748–1758), a neutral beam injector is provided to raise the ion temperature to ∼1 keV. This injector has a capability of injecting hydrogen beam with the power of 0.5 MW at 30 keV. For the upgrade of SST-1, power of 1.7 MW at 55 KeV is required. Further, beam power is to be provided for a pulse length of 1000S. We have designed a neutral beam injector (S.K. Mattoo, A.K. Chakraborty, U.K. Baruah, P.K. Jayakumar, M. Bandyopadhyay, N. Bisai, Ch. Chakrapani, M.R. Jana, R. Onali, V. Prahlad, P.J. Patel, G.B. Patel, B. Prajapati, N.V.M. Rao, S. Rambabu, C. Rotti, S.K. Sharma, S. Shah, V. Sharma, M.J. Singh, Engineering design of the steady-state neutral beam injector for SST-1, Fusion Eng. Des. 56 (2001) 685–691; A.K. Chakraborty, N. Bisai, M.R. Jana, P.K. Jayakumar, U.K. Baruah, P.J. Patel, K. Rajasekar, S.K. Mattoo, Neutral beam injector for steady-state superconducting tokamak, Fusion Technol. (1996) 657–660; P.K. Jayakumar, M.R. Jana, N. Bisai, M. Bajpai, N.P. Singh, U.K. Baruah, A.K. Chakraborty, M. Bandyopadhyay, C. Chrakrapani, D. Patel, G.B. Patel, P. Patel, V. Prahlad, N.V.M. Rao, C. Rotti, V. Sreedhar, S.K. Mattoo, Engineering issues of a 1000S neutral beam ion source, Fusion Technol. 1 (1998) 419–422) satisfying the requirements for both SST-1 and its upgrade. Since intense power is to be transported to SST-1 situated at a distance of several meters from the ion source, the optical quality of the beam becomes a primary concern. This in turn, is determined by the uniformity of the ion source plasma and the extractor geometry. To obtain the desired optical quality of the beam, stringent tolerances are to be met during the fabrication of ion extractor system. SST-1 neutral beam injector is based on positive ion source. The extraction system consists of three grids, each having extraction area of (width) 230 mm × (height) 480 mm and 774-shaped apertures of 8-mm diameter. To obtain horizontal focal length of 5.4 m and vertical of 7 m, each grid consists of two halves with 387 apertures. Two halves are inclined at an angle of 1.07 ± 0.01°. For long pulse operation, active water cooling is provided by in-laid down of dense network of 22 wavy semicircular ( r = 1.1 ± 0.05 mm) cooling channels in the space available between the apertures. The required flatness of the copper plate is 100 μm and positioning tolerance of aperture is ±60 μm. The measurement obtained after fabrication is compared with the specifications. It is pointed out that fabrication within set tolerance limit could be achieved only through process of fabrication and high-resolution measurements.

Excitation of Alfvén eigenmodes by low energy beam ions in the DIII-D and JET tokamaks

Core localized Alfvén eigenmodes in DIII-D [J. L. Luxon, Nucl. Fusion 42, 614 (2002)] and Joint European Torus (JET) [P. H. Rebut and B. E. Keen, Fusion Technol. 11, 13 (1987)] plasmas are driven by deuterium neutral beam ions traveling well below the Alfvén speed. Modes are observed in reverse magnetic shear discharges with deuterium ion velocities as low as 0.23 and 0.16 of the Alfvén speed parallel to the magnetic field in DIII-D and JET plasmas, respectively. Ellipticity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes in DIII-D and toroidicity-induced Alfvén eigenmodes in JET are excited by deuterium ions traveling well below the fundamental passing ion resonance condition, indicating the role of high-order resonances in driving these modes. NOVA-K analysis reveals many high-order resonances as contributing to the mode drive at high central safety factor due to the correspondingly large poloidal orbit width and the decrease in the perpendicular scale length of the modes.

Effect of radial electric field and ripple on edge neutral beam ion distribution in ASDEX Upgrade

The neutral beam injected fast ion distribution at the ASDEX Upgrade edge region is studied focusing on the difference between co- and counter-injected neutral beams. The slowing-down distribution of beam ions is simulated using the orbit-following Monte Carlo code ASCOT. The edge fast ion density and its gradient are higher for counter-injection than for co-injection. Also the distribution in the velocity space is different: for co-injection, there exists a population of untrapped particles which for counter-injection is found only when the effect of a non-constant, experimentally obtained quiescent H-mode radial electric field is included in the simulation. Toroidal ripple removes ions having small particle pitch, thereby reducing the density and density gradient, whereas the radial electric field has the opposite effect. Including simultaneously the effects of both ripple and the radial electric field restores the distribution close to the ideal case where both of them are neglected. The radial electric field is found to squeeze the orbit of a counter-injected neutral beam ion but to widen the orbit of a co-injected ion, and to cause transitions in the orbit topologies which are reflected in the fast ion distribution.

Generation of space charge compensated low energy ion flux

The results of an experimental study of low-energy (<200 eV) ion flux generation with space charge neutralization are presented. Argon was used as a working gas. The working gas pressure in the vacuum chamber was 2-4 x 10(-2) Pa. Ion beam was extracted from the hollow cathode of main discharge plasma by a single mesh extractor with subsequent deceleration of ions to a required energy in a layer between the mesh and the beam plasma. The ion beam current was measured on the collector located on the distance of 30-60 cm from the discharge system. The penetration of electron component from the main discharge plasma through the mesh into the region of the ion beam drift space was realized by potential barrier reduction, in conditions of the optimal extractor potential with respect to the hollow cathode. The space charge neutralization of low-energy ion beam resulted in drift space plasma potential reduction and ion beam current growth. At the main discharge current of 1 A and main discharge voltage of 300 V, the ion beam current of up to 100 mA with the ion energy of 50-150 eV was obtained.

Chapter 8: Particle Diagnostics

Three techniques for particle diagnostics of magnetically confined fusion plasmas are reviewed: charge exchange neutral particle analysis, Rutherford scattering, and heavy ion beam probes. The physical basis and instrumentation for each technique are described. Typical examples obtained by these diagnostics are presented. Charge exchange analysis is used for ion temperature measurements in small- and medium-sized plasma devices and for the study of the ion energy distribution function, especially in the suprathermal energy range. It also provides an ion isotope composition determination that is a high-priority task for ITER. Rutherford scattering enables local measurements of the ion temperature as well as measurements of the ion collective velocity. The heavy ion beam probe diagnostic gives a unique opportunity to measure locally the electric plasma potential and, by that, the electric field profile in a plasma and its influence on confinement. Other significant options of this diagnostic are the measurements of the local electron density and fluctuations in these quantities. Prospects for the application of the various techniques to ITER are discussed.

Scintillator based energetic ion loss diagnostic for the National Spherical Torus Experiment

A scintillator based energetic ion loss detector has been built and installed on the National Spherical Torus Experiment (NSTX) [Synakowski et al., Nucl. Fusion 43, 1653 (2000)] to measure the loss of neutral beam ions. The detector is able to resolve the pitch angle and gyroradius of the lost energetic ions. It has a wide acceptance range in pitch angle and energy, and is able to resolve the full, one-half, and one-third energy components of the 80 keV D neutral beams up to the maximum toroidal magnetic field of NSTX. Multiple Faraday cups have been embedded behind the scintillator to allow easy absolute calibration of the diagnostic and to measure the energetic ion loss in several ranges of pitch angle with good time resolution. Several small, vacuum compatible lamps allow simple calibration of the scintillator position within the field of view of the diagnostic's video camera.