PPPL-5356

Improving fast-ion confinement in high-performance discharges by suppressing Alfvén eigenmodes

Authors: G.J. Kramer, M. Podestŕ,  L. Cui, N.N. Gorelenkov, B. Grierson, and R. Nazikian

Abstract: We show that the degradation of fast-ion confinement in steady-state DIII-D discharges is quantitatively consistent with predictions based on the effects of multiple unstable Alfvén eigenmodes on beam-ion transport. Simulation and experiment show that increasing the radius where the magnetic safety factor has its minimum is effective in minimizing beam-ion transport. This is favorable for achieving high performance steady-state operation in DIII-D and future reactors. A comparison between the experiments and a critical gradient model, in which only equilibrium profiles were used to predict the most unstable modes, show that in a number of cases this model reproduces the measured neutron rate well.

Submitted to: Nuclear Fusion
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Download PPPL-5356  1.5 MB (18 pp)
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