Initial testing of ohmic heating through double flux swing during electron cyclotron start-up in the QUEST spherical tokamak

摘要

A power-supply system was developed for Ohmic heating(OH)to double×10^(18)the amount of change magnetic flux in the primary central solenoid(CS)on the QUEST spherical tokamak.Two power supplies are connected with stacks of insulated-gate bipolar transistors,and sequentially operated to generate positive and negative CS currents.This bipolar power-supply system is controlled via a field-programmable gate array,which guarantees the safety of the entire system operation.The new OH system,assisted by electron cyclotron heating,enables the stable generation of plasma currents exceeding 100 k A.Moreover,the achieved electron density over the wide range in the major radial direction exceeds the cut-off density for one of the highpower microwave sources in QUEST.This strategy yields target plasmas for future experiments with the electron Bernstein wave.