First high-power helicon results from DIII-D

the DIII-D team

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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).

Original languageEnglish
Article number126058
JournalNuclear Fusion
Volume64
Issue number12
DOIs
StatePublished - Dec 2024

Funding

This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Fusion Energy Sciences, using the DIII-D National Fusion Facility, a DOE Office of Science user facility, under Awards DE-FC0204ER54698, DE-SC0016154, DE-SC0020649, DE-AC52-07NA27344, DE-SC0020337, DE-FG02-07ER54917, DE-AC05-00OR22725, and DE-AC02-09CH11466.

FundersFunder number
U.S. Department of Energy
Fusion Energy Sciences
Office of ScienceDE-AC05-00OR22725, DE-FC0204ER54698, DE-SC0016154, DE-SC0020649, DE-AC02-09CH11466, DE-AC52-07NA27344, DE-FG02-07ER54917, DE-SC0020337
Office of Science

    Keywords

    • comb-line
    • DIII-D
    • fast waves
    • helicon
    • traveling-wave antenna

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