Distributions of Alpha Particles Escaping to the Wall because of Sawtooth Oscillations in TFTR
Authors: Ya. I. Kolesnichenko, V.V. Lutsenko, R.B. White, Yu. V. Yakovenko, and S.J. Zweben
It has been observed experimentally in deuterium-tritium shots of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) that crashes of sawtooth oscillations may result in very inhomogeneous flux of alpha particles to the wall. Namely, measurements with four detectors installed at the wall at 20°, 45°, 60°, and 90° below the midplane of the torus have shown that the alpha flux to the wall is strongly peaked at the 20° and 90° detectors and on the noise level at the 45° detector. To explain this phenomenon, both theoretical analysis and numerical simulation have been carried out. It is concluded that the "crash-induced prompt loss," i.e., the orbital loss of marginally trapped particles arising because of the crash-induced orbit transformation of circulating particles, is responsible for the flux to the 90° and 60° detectors, whereas the crash-induced stochastic diffusion of moderately trapped particles explains the large signal at the 20° detector. The calculated poloidal distributions of the integral alpha flux are in reasonable agreement with experimental data. In addition to the integral flux, the flux of particles with given energy was calculated. The energy spectrum of the escaping particles has also been calculated, which can be used for diagnostics of the crash type.