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P: Fachverband Plasmaphysik

P 16: Theory and Modelling II

P 16.2: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 2. März 2016, 14:55–15:10, b302

The perturbing effect of density fluctuations on a microwave beam — •Alf Köhn¹, Matthew Thomas², Antti Snicker¹, Omar Maj¹, Eberhard Holzhauer³, Roddy Vann², Jarrod Leddy², and Emanuele Poli¹ — ¹Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Garching, Germany — ²York Plasma Institute, University of York, UK — ³Institute of Interfacial Process Engineering and Plasma Technology, University of Stuttgart, Germany

Electromagnetic waves in the microwave regime are widely used for heating and diagnostic purposes in fusion relevant plasmas. Of especial importance is the stabilization of neoclassical tearing modes by localized current drive which requires a well defined microwave beam at the position of absorption. Density fluctuations at the plasma boundary can lead to a widening of the beam and thereby in principle to a reduction of the current drive efficiency.

Here, we investigate the perturbing effect of density fluctuations on a propagating microwave beam by means of two full-wave codes, IPF-FDMC and EMIT-3D. The density fluctuations are created by a Hasegawa-Wakatani drift-wave turbulence model within the BOUT++ framework. In addition, the novel code WKBeam, based on solving the wave kinetic equation, is applied to the above mentioned scenario exploring its limits at high fluctuation amplitude.