First high-power helicon results from DIII-D
Abstract More than 0.6 MW of rf power at 476 MHz has been coupled to DIII-D plasmas by launching helicon (whistler) waves with a traveling-wave antenna (comb-line) in the fast-wave polarization (Van Compernolle et al 2021 Nucl. Fusion 61 116034) which resulted in the observation of electron heating of the core plasma with single-pass absorption based on ray-tracing in L-mode discharges. The coupling performance of the 1.5 m wide 30-element comb-line traveling-wave antenna has been consistent with expectations based on the 2015–2016 experiments on DIII-D with a low-power 12-element prototype (Pinsker et al 2018 Nucl. Fusion 58 106007). The conditioning process that was necessary to carry out high-power experiments is discussed; rf-specific impurities have not been observed. Parametric decay instabilities have been observed and are being investigated as a potential edge absorption mechanism (Porkolab et al 2023 AIP Conf. Proc. 2984 070004).
Authors
- A. Marinoni (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1004-5782)
- A.G. McLean (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0697-4397)
- A. Nagy (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8201-2528)
- C. C. Petty (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4534-9073)
- Genevieve DeGrandchamp
- G. Ronchi (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3097-3033)
- E. H. Martin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7473-4328)
- K. Gage (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0262-416X)
- Satyajit Chowdhury
- B. Van Compernolle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5853-6233)
- Shawn Tang
- R. I. Pinsker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2683-9480)
- J. C. Rost (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4501-8995)
- Jeff Lestz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6975-1537)
- A. M. Garofalo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8244-2448)
- M. Porkoláb (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9518-4097)
- Jared Squire
- Alexandre Dupuy
- N. A. Crocker (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2379-5814)
- C.P. Moeller
- Seung-Gyou Baek
Institutions
- Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (US)
- Oak Ridge National Laboratory (US)
- University of California, Los Angeles (US)
- University of California, Irvine (US)
- Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (US)
- University of California San Diego (US)
- General Atomics (United States) (US)
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (US)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Nuclear Fusion
- Published
- 2024-09-10
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1088/1741-4326/ad78e8
- Citations
- 12
- Primary Topic
- Magnetic confinement fusion research
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 7.26
Funders
- Fusion Energy Sciences