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Third-harmonic, top-launch, ECRH
experiments on TCV tokamak |
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S. Alberti, G. Arnoux, L. Porte, J.-P. Hogge, B. Marletaz,
P. Marmillod, Y. Martin, S. Nowak and TCV Team |
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2005 |
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DOI |
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Resumo |
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In the moderate magnetic field of TCV (1.5 T), the recently installed X3 system (3 gyrotrons, 118 GHz, 0.45MW
each, 2 s) broadens the operational space with the possibility of heating plasmas at high density, well above the
cutoff density of the X2 system. To compensate for the significantly weaker absorption coefficient compared to
the absorption of X2, the top-launch injection allows the ray path to maximize along the resonance layer thereby
maximizing the optical depth. To maintain the maximum absorption in plasma discharges with a dynamic variation
in both density (refraction) and temperature (relativistic shift) a real-time control system on the mirror injection
angle, based on a mirror modulation technique (synchronous demodulation), has been developed and successfully
tested on TCV. Comparisons of the absorption calculated with the TORAY-GA ray-tracing code and the ECWGB
beam-tracing code, which includes diffraction effects, are presented. An experimental study of the X3 absorption
versus plasma density in an L-mode plasma shows that with a total injected power of 1.35MW full single-pass
absorption is reached with a significant fraction of the absorbed power associated with the presence of suprathermal
electrons. Compared with ohmic/low-power-heating of ELMy H-modes, it has been possible to enter into a different
ELMy regime with an injected power of 1.35MW. |
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